Seventh Level
by generationalccwr
Summary: Rated M for a reason. Maria gives Shadow a second chance at life, but is this new life truly worth living? Set in my own world, and slightly complicated. Fixed the problem with Chapters 5 & 6 they are now in order!
1. A Past and a Fall

Chapter One: A Past and a Fall

"I am... Shadow the Hedgehog!!!" The normally black and red hedgehog was yellow and red due to his super form; he was fighting, with sonic, to defeat the biolizard, to prevent the planet Earth from being destroyed by the space colony Ark, which was speeding towards the planet at an alarming rate. He removed the power-savers on his wrists, and used the last of his energy to destroy the biolizard and restore the abandoned space colony to a steady orbit around the earth. Sonic looked back at him, and noticed that Shadow had fallen out of his super form, and realized that without the energy generated by the Chaos Emeralds, the bad-turned-good hedgehog would fall to the earth; he wouldn't even feel the pain of hitting the ground and breaking all of his bones, because he would burn to ashes in the Earth's atmosphere. Shadow saw the look of realization in the blue-turned-gold hedgehog's eyes, and nodded, saying,

"I have kept my promise; I can now join her in peace." Sonic asked,

"Is that what you really want?" Shadow replied,

"Everything I ever cared for has died or disappeared; there is nothing left for me here." Sonic shrugged and frowned, saying,

"If you want to be a killjoy like that, I guess there's nothing I can do to stop you." Shadow had replied with something, but he had fallen too far down for Sonic to hear him. Sonic turned, and flew toward the Ark, dropping his super form as he entered the Ark to deliver the bad news.

As Shadow fell, he flashed back to the times when Maria was alive.

_"Shadow, when Granddaddy finds a cure for me, we will go to Earth. We'll be able to see snow, and real trees, and we'll be able to make lots of friends!" Shadow smiled at her, and replied, _

_"That sounds nice, Maria." Maria smiled back._

_"Shadow?" Maria asked another time, not too long before her death, _

_"We're going to be best friends forever, won't we?" Shadow nodded, and replied, _

_"Yeah, we'll be friends forever. Nothing will separate us." And another memory: _

_"Shadow, Granddaddy has worked for a long time to help those people down on Earth. That means when he dies, it'll be our job to make sure we help the people there. Will you promise me that you'll help me?" Shadow nodded, and responded, _

_"Of course. I promise, Maria; we're friends, right?" Maria smiled happily, and said, "Thank you, Shadow." And then, finally, the memories that had haunted him since Eggman had woken him from his 50-year stasis. _

_"Put your hand down! Don't pull that lever!" The G.U.N. soldier had yelled at Maria, pointing his gun at her threateningly. _

_'I have to save Shadow,' Maria thought to herself, 'One of us has to go to Earth and live. He is Granddaddy's life's work; maybe if I send him down to earth in this pod, he'll survive.' Shadow, stuck in the pod, saw her intention, and yelled, _

_"Maria, no!" Maria pulled the lever, and the G.U.N. soldier instinctively pulled the trigger. She fell, and Shadow screamed. She was still alive, but they both knew that she wouldn't live for much longer. _

_"Shadow," she said, laboring to breathe as she quickly lost blood, "remember our promise. Help those people down on Earth for me, since I won't be there to help you do it." Shadow nodded, his customary frown one of sadness, and said, _

_"I promise, Maria." Maria looked at him with her blue eyes, and took her last breath._

_ At that moment, the pod Shadow was in released, and Shadow fell to the Earth, where he would eventually be found by the G.U.N. troops and sealed away on Prison Island for 50 years until Eggman hacked his grandfather's computer, and discovered that his grandfather had tampered with Shadow's memories, so that he would destroy the Earth, as revenge for the death of Maria, his granddaughter; Eggman, who enjoyed threatening the planet, went to Prison Island and released Shadow... eventually leading to the events that led to Shadow's falling towards the Earth._

"Maria, is this enough?" Shadow asked aloud as he fell towards the atmosphere, "have I kept my promise?" As he began to fall unconscious, he thought he heard,

"Shadow, you haven't lived yet; we can't both die before our time. You have to have a second chance; the same way you promised me, I promise you that you will not die yet."


	2. School and Insanity

Chapter Two: School and Insanity

Shadow woke. This was enough of a surprise in and of itself, but when he reached for the power of the Chaos Emeralds, he sensed... nothing.

'What?' He thought to himself, 'Why can't I sense them?" He opened his eyes, and quickly shut them. All around him, in the air around him and amidst the stone buildings that surrounded him, were pulsating strings of various colors- including colors that couldn't possibly be on the rainbow spectrum.

"Where am I?" he asked aloud, standing up, trying to get used to the strange energy that surrounded him.

"You're in the X-realm," replied a black-haired woman, walking up to him, "You must be new, with the look of confusion on your face and the lack of taint on your aura. I sensed that an outlander had been brought here, and decided to come and investigate. Oh, I'm Akutenshi, by the way. And you are...?" Shadow frowned, and answered,

"I'm Shadow. You said you sensed that I had been brought here... do you know who brought me here?" Akutenshi looked at him for a moment, and seemed to be judging something.

"Well, Shadow," she began, "judging from your aura…it seems that it was a couple of people that brought you here. One person put in a multi-dimensional call to have you transported to another dimension- asylum, I figure, or to prevent you from dying- and there was someone here that was powerful enough to answer that call, and they transported you here. Other than that, I dunno."

Shadow digested what he had been told, and concluded his thoughts with,

'Maria... so it wasn't my imagination... you did give me a second chance.' Akutenshi interrupted his reverie with,

"So, since you're here and you're new, you should be put into a school. I'd suggest Sarakunoshe Academy; there's a good chance that you could learn what you need to get out of this place; a lot you can learn.." Shadow frowned, and replied,

"I doubt I will need to go to school," Akutenshi laughed, and replied,

"Make me laugh. You don't even know how to use the energy currents around you; you'll be easy prey for anyone that wants to torture, or enslave, or rape, or whatever they decide to do with you. Normally, I would have abducted you and probably tortured and killed you, but the person that brought you to this dimension would have a serious problem with that. Personally, I figure, I bring a person back to life, there's no real problem." Shadow raised an eyebrow. Akutenshi laughed again, and said,

"Yeah, you do need to go to Sarakunoshe Academy; it's a bit safer there, and you'll learn how to defend yourself. So, off we go."

Akutenshi grabbed Shadow by the wrist, and dragged him to the school, which was located a few blocks from where Shadow awoke only minutes before.

"Would you let me go?" Shadow asked irritatedly, "I'll follow you myself, you don't have to drag me to this 'Academy' of yours." Akutenshi let go of his wrist, and pointed in front of them.

"We're here." They stood before a large stone building; it looked like a medieval castle, complete with turrets, moat, and drawbridge. Akutenshi said,

"Ok, follow me. I'll take you to Yikomu; she's the headmistress and she'll know what to do with you. She's an outlander herself; she sought asylum here after her power went rogue and killed her entire town." Shadow sighed. It seemed that he had woken up in a world full of dangerous people with little trace of sanity.

They eventually made their way through the surprisingly well-lit stone halls to Yikomu's comfortable-looking office. Akutenshi said to Yikomu, a young woman who was possibly in her twenties,

"Hey, I found an outlander, and figured I'd bring him here." Yikomu raised an eyebrow, and asked,

"What'd you do to him first? I'm not taking on any more of your genetic experiments, Akutenshi." Akutenshi laughed, and replied,

"This one is _her _work, Yikomu. I'm not looking for that kind of trouble Besides, what am I supposed to do with an anthropomorphic hedgehog? There might be some here that'll do non-humanoids, but I'm not one of them." Yikomu rolled her eyes, and replied,

"Will wonders never cease? The infamous Akutenshi not only does nothing to an outlander foundling, but also admits that she has limits to her deranged sexual tastes. Well, if you have nothing else to say, I'll see what I can do with him." Akutenshi laughed, and replied,

"All right; but remember what I said about him being _her _interest" Yikomu nodded, and Akutenshi left the office.

Yikomu turned to Shadow, and asked,

"So, what's your name, and how much do you know about using energy?" Shadow told her his name, and explained how he could pull and manipulate energy from the Chaos Emeralds. Yikomu nodded, and when he finished, she replied,

"So you can use the energy contained in magical objects, and you can pull this energy from a considerable distance. Well, you're off to a better start than most of the outlanders that come through the gates of this academy. Well, I'll put you into some classes; it'll be hard to keep up at first, but you seem intelligent enough that you'll pick things up quickly. Just give me a few minutes to work out your schedule..." Yikomu pulled out a large stack of papers and considered them, mumbling things like, "that class is too full... and that kid is in the other one... the girl in this one is nice..." Yikomu finally decided on a 8-class schedule; she wrote it out and handed it to Shadow. Shadow looked at the letters on the paper and raised an eyebrow. Yikomu noticed his confusion, and said,

"Oh, you can't read it? I figured that since you could speak Arkanto, you could read it. Sorry about that, let me fix it." Yikomu pulled a series of the colored lines, and Shadow was instantly able to comprehend the words on the paper.

Yikomu waited for him to say something and when he didn't say anything, finally said,

"Well, I put you in classes that you'll need; I can sense that you have a great deal of magical potential, so you need to learn to use it before it uses you. When I looked at the class rolls, I noticed one name that popped up several times... Ame... I think she has all her classes with you...She's fairly friendly with outlanders, since she was originally one but was... reborn as an X-realmer. She's a very powerful magician, so nobody really messes with her; if you can manage to befriend her, that'll do wonders as far as keeping you out of trouble. There are directions to your classes on your schedule; they'll automatically change when you need to go somewhere else. Well, if you need any help, I'm here." Shadow asked,

"Akutenshi said you are an outlander. Have you ever wanted to go back to where you came from? Did you ever try?" Yikomu got a sad look in her eyes, and responded,

"I'm assuming you're asking this because you want to go back. If there was anyone alive there who didn't want me dead, I would go back; but there is nothing there for me now. Everyone I cared for was destroyed when my magic went out of control. That's why it's best for those with great magical potential be taught how to master it; it's less likely to run out of control and wreak havoc on those around it." Shadow nodded; he understood the feeling of not really having a place.

"Well, I guess I'll see you later," Yikomu said, most of the sadness gone from her voice. Shadow nodded, and turned to leave.


	3. First Class and Strange Girl

Chapter Three: First Class and Strange Girl

Shadow earned and ignored quite a few stares from people in the halls as he made his way to his first class. He saw several types of hominids; graceful ones with long, pointed ears and slanted eyebrows, some with small wings, big burly ones with large noses and sharp eyes, some regular humans, and, occasionally, the deathly white-skinned ones with the fangs. He noticed that those tended to have more lines of colorful energy around them. He finally made it to his first class, on the second floor, and found that the only unoccupied desk was in the front row, so he took that seat.

There was a girl beside him, reading notes from a notebook. She eventually looked up and noticed him; she blushed and looked away. Shadow didn't understand what the blush was, but noticed that the many lines of energy around her contracted towards her. After a few seconds, the energy returned to its usual patchwork pattern, and she looked at Shadow, and said,

"Hello, my name's Ame." Shadow noticed the fangs in her mouth, and the white color in her skin, but unlike the other fanged humanoids with silver hair and grey eyes, she had black hair and dark green eyes.

"So you're new here, huh? I can tell by your aura; the lines don't know quite what to do with you yet. It doesn't help that you're pretty powerful; they're itching to be used. They're pretty impatient things, especially when they're around people that can use them properly." Shadow raised an eyebrow at the personification of the lines, and said,

"You are the one that Yikomu told me about; you're another outlander." Ame nodded, and asked,

"So, Mr. Anthropomorphic Hedgehog, what's your name?" Shadow couldn't help but snort at the title she had given him, and replied,

"My name is Shadow." Ame rolled her eyes, and replied,

"Wow, that said a whole lot. I bet you've been dragged around the dimension like a ragdoll—someone with as much magical potential as you do attracts other powerful people. Must be pretty infuriating to not have any say in what happens because you have a bunch of odd women dragging you around." Shadow raised an eyebrow, and asked,

"And how exactly would you know that's what has been going on for the past hour?" Ame laughed, and replied,

"You're not the first outlander to end up in this situation… it doesn't happen often, but it happens enough that some people have seen it before."

Shadow shook his head; it was strange for someone to just talk to him without demanding something of him, or trying to start a fight with him.

Ame reached into her black bag; it had a strange red symbol on it that wasn't one of the strange letters of that language- Arkanto? - that Yikomu had written in, pulled out a notebook and pen, and gave them to Shadow.

"You're going to want to take notes in this class, and in most of your other classes. I know most of this stuff, and I still take notes. Things have changed in the last billion years or so, and I've had to relearn it since it's been about that long since I went to school here.

Shadow looked at the girl in shock. There was no way she could be more than eighteen years old, unless she had immortality... or could bring herself back to life in a new body whenever she died. He figured that with what Akutenshi and Yikomu had said, this was entirely possible. Ame laughed, and replied,

"I spent a lot of it in stasis, so quit looking at me like that." Shadow understood this, since he had been in stasis for fifty years before the past few days.

He asked, "So what exactly are they supposed to be teaching us here?" Ame replied,

"How to use magical energy, history of the X-realm, sex ed..." Shadow raised an eyebrow and exclaimed,

"What?!" Ame laughed at the incredulity in his voice, and replied,

"I was kidding about the last one, although it would be useful, especially in this city; gang rape is popular and so is drugging someone and then raping them. You probably won't have too much of a problem with this, unless..." She blushed again; the energy pulled towards her again, and it was about a minute before she regained her composure. Shadow knew that something was up, but couldn't figure out what it was. It was similar to the actions of someone who was lying, but different enough that he knew that wasn't what it was.

"What are you hiding?" Shadow asked Ame, who shook her head and replied,

"If you don't know already, you don't want to know. Seriously, I am not telling you." Shadow looked at her seriously, and replied,

"Then I will make it my goal to find out what it is. The energy around you pulls together when you do that, and I want to know why." Ame's eyes widened, and she asked,

"You noticed that?! I thought my shielding was better than that!" She sighed, and swore, "Aw, shit, you've got to be fucking kidding me; you can't seriously have that much magical potential." Shadow replied with amusement,

"But I apparently do; if I can see past some of your shields.'

'So, what is this first class about?" Ame greatly appreciated the change of subject. She replied, "This class is about the various species of people that are living here. If you get too well known, you'll have half the researchers on the subject bothering you constantly." She got a paper out of her notebook, and read through it, and said,

"Huh, they're doing my species of vampire today. This should be fun; they usually get things wrong and I get to correct them." Shadow asked,

"If it's about the people that live here, wouldn't that mean more than one individual of that species? With the way people ogled me in the halls, I suspect there aren't any others like me." Ame replied,

"I'm the only Z-vampire that lives in the X-realm, but I still get a day's lesson in this class. Other species get much more, but there's only so much you can talk about when your one subject isn't very friendly to natives. I'm an asshole to everyone but the outlanders; the outlanders mostly haven't been corrupted by this place."

Shadow asked, "Corrupted? How do you mean?" Ame replied,

"Noticeably, there's a mark on your aura that shows you've used some X-realm magic; the mark is more obvious the more you use it. Also, if you're tan, your skin grows lighter over time. The "sun" here isn't real, it's just a magical construct to differentiate between day and night, so that the dark and light magics have equal time to be at peak strength." Shadow asked,

"And the signs that aren't noticeable?" Ame's expression darkened.

"Well... just from my observations of outlanders that come here... the longer you are here, the weaker your moral fiber becomes. This place makes you lose a lot of your morals; your honor code gets broken so many times for various reasons that it's basically useless." Shadow looked at her, and asked,

"You were originally an outlander; have these things not happened to you?" Ame sighed, and replied,

"Yeah, they have, to a point... but unlike all the others I have ever met, the memories of who I was have never faded, not even a little bit. I remember the first eighteen years of my life like they were yesterday." Shadow looked down, looked back up, and replied,

"Then I must get out of here as soon as possible. My memories and my honor code are all I have; I cannot let myself lose them." Ame gave him a look of sympathy, and replied,

"I know how that feels, I really do... including the wanting to leave part."

At that point the teacher came in, and said, "Sorry I'm late, but it took me a while to find the notes for this class... since Ame is in here, I wanted to find the most correct information so I wouldn't be interrupted every two seconds." The teacher gave an exasperated look at Ame, who grinned mischievously. The teacher then noticed Shadow, and asked,

"So you're the Shadow that showed up on my roll this morning. Outlander, I assume?" Shadow was getting slightly annoyed at the fact that everyone who met him commented on that fact.

"Well, you'll eventually get used to it here; just study your classes and you should do just fine in school," the teacher added. The teacher was male; which surprised Shadow; he had noticed that most of the people he had seen thus far were female, about a 5:1 ratio of males to females, he guessed.

"So, today we're talking about Z-vampires; there's only one resident Z-vampire in the X-realm," the teacher nodded towards Ame, "and she's sitting in this class, waiting to correct me if I make the slightest mistake. Recently, we have discovered a dimension with a large population of Z-vampires, so, hopefully, our information is accurate." Someone giggled, and Shadow heard someone murmur,

"As if we need to give her any excuses to show that an outlander can beat X-realmers at their own game. She's so fucking dorky, and she's too powerful to mess with." Shadow remembered Yikomu's words about Ame's reputation for not being messed with.

The teacher continued, "Z-vampires typically have a higher magical potential than other species of vampires; they can also store more energy. It is very difficult for them to use small bits of energy to perform simple spells such as changing the color of objects or healing small wounds, but when their emotions run high they are capable of releasing enormous amounts of energy at once. They also share a trait of the faeries in that they can pull energy from the space around them and from other people." The same person that had muttered earlier asked,

"So, basically, they're a bitch to try to fight when they get pissed off, but in small scuffles we can beat them? They got any other weaknesses?" Ame frowned at this comment, and her eyebrows narrowed in worry. The teacher answered,

"Yes, they do. As you have previously learned in your use of magic class, one of the best ways to transfer and renew magical energy is through sex. Z-vampires have very little control over their energy when in lust- sexual or vampiric - and are vulnerable to people who know how to take advantage of this. Another weakness, one shared with other vampires but amplified in the Z species, is the constant decreasing of life energy that leads to their blood lust. Whereas B-vampires can go two months without blood and A-vampires can go two weeks without it, Z-vampires can only go two days without taking blood from someone." Ame spoke aloud, frown still on her face,

"There is an exception to that, actually. I don't know about the others, but I know I can convert magical energy into life energy in an emergency. It does, of course, make it damned difficult to bring myself back to life if I do die, but it makes the chances of my dying much slimmer." The teacher nodded, and added this to his notes, before saying,

"Z-vampires have two more important weaknesses. Other vampires are born vampires. Zs can only change humans into vampires, and when they do, they die. The human, when changed, has three extra chromosomes added. These extra genes make for very unstable DNA; which typically leads to health problems or severe mental problems."

"Like the people in this dimension aren't insane to begin with," Ame muttered bitterly. Shadow quietly agreed with her.

The notes continued on for about an hour, and they changed classes. The next class was on the fifth floor, so Ame and Shadow had a long way to walk.

"I'm nervous about Jaren saying that stuff in class," Ame said to Shadow quietly as they traversed through the stone halls, "Most people just look at my aura and say, 'Not messing with that kind of power', but anyone that knows my weaknesses can take advantage of me pretty easily. And Jaren's always disliked me; he was the only person stupid enough to pick a fight with me when I first came here. It's apparently the only fight he's ever lost, and he can't live it down."

Shadow nodded, following her thread of logic. She had such a flippant attitude (that slightly reminded him of a certain blue hedgehog) when they had first met that he was surprised by the intelligence it hid. She had a sense of vulnerability, one that was painfully similar to that of a certain blond, blue-eyed girl...


	4. Second Class and Third Class

AN: Wow, I had no idea how many Sonic fics were updated everyday. Ame's a bit Sue-ish in this chapter, sorry.

They reached their second class without incident, except that Ame was out-of-breath. Shadow eyed her with slight concern, and she replied between breaths, "  
He... wasn't kidding... when he said that we get health problems..." In this class, the teacher was already present, and she looked at the two incomers with an accusing glare.  
"You're late," the woman said, "outlanders. I know you think you can abide by your own rules, but here things work differently. Perhaps I should find a way to punish you and teach you a lesson."  
Ame, who had worry lines on her for the past while, straightened up and got a hard look on her face.  
"First of all," she began with a cold voice, "We are traveling here from the second floor-- if you were in the same position it would take you five minutes longer. Second of all, it seems more like you do not know the law of the realm." The teacher raised her eyebrows mockingly, and asked,  
"Oh, really, outlander? What would you know about the law of the X-realm?" Ame replied sarcastically,  
"Oh, not much, except that the law of the X-realm for the past fourteen billion years has been: The only rule is that there is only one rule. By creating more rules, you are breaking the rule. So I would suggest you leave us alone and teach your class before I humiliate you even more."  
There was an outbreak of laughter in the classroom; this teacher was very unpopular because she was a vindictive bitch. Ame sat in her seat, and motioned for Shadow to sit in the seat beside her. The teacher glared at her for a minute, and began to teach the class, which was a class on the X-realm government.  
"The X-realm is run by the Council of Nine. They create the laws which help govern this dimension and keep it from falling apart. Many other dimensions see them as corrupt, because they have not outlawed things like murder, torture, and rape; but we realize that there's no point in outlawing it; it is a part of the X-realm tradition for these things to happen; and it is the right of the person who wants to do these things to go ahead and do them. The victim is allowed to do the same thing back; so whoever is the strongest eventually wins the conflict. Survival of the strongest, you might say. Outlanders, of course, are inherently weak, and to protect them, they are not allowed the same rights as natives."  
The class went on and on, and Shadow noticed the energy around Ame begin to pulsate and flare, much like the raised vein of someone who was extremely angry. Shadow couldn't blame her; he also disliked what was being said.  
'Maria, why?' he asked her memory in his mind, 'why am I here? Why couldn't you have let me join you?'  
By the time the class ended, the energy around Ame was pulsating violently, and swirling around her like a whirlwind. As they walked to their third class, Ame said,  
"I'd like to drain all of her blood, and show her what it's like to be the victim. I'm hungry anyway, and she's got a lot of life force. 'Course, she might be more trouble than it's worth; but the blood tastes better when you're getting it out of revenge." Shadow thought it strange that she was talking about, essentially, eating someone alive so blithely. Her comment about morals eroding was brought home at that moment.  
By the beginning of the third class, Ame's energy was back to the calm, unmoving patchwork, which had been dangerously close to lashing out at the teacher only minutes before.  
"I'm glad it's back to normal," Ame said to Shadow as she checked it, "This is a shielding class and I don't need to have my emotions out of whack in this one; it makes it damn hard to shield right. This teacher is really good at seeing through shields, so I can't half-ass it. Oh, and Shadow, I hope you aren't offended by the profanity, but I cuss a lot." Shadow shook his head; he used enough of the words himself when he was annoyed enough.  
The teacher came in; she was a girl, maybe ten years old; she smiled at the class, and said,  
"Today we're going to work on making shields tight when our emotions are high. So, I'll pair you up." The girl pointed out pairs, until she got to Ame and Shadow.  
"I heard about how you verbally beat the shit out of the Bitch," she said to Ame, "I wish I had been there to see it." Ame laughed appreciatively, and the girl turned to Shadow.  
"First off, I may look like a kid but I'm about five thousand years old, so don't look down on me. Second off, as Ame will certainly attest to, I'm a hard taskmaster; I expect you to pick this stuff up quickly or get some serious tutoring." Ame shook her head, and commented,  
"Only because you're too lazy to actually teach." The girl gave Ame The Look, and Ame smiled in return.  
"Well, it looks like we're paired by default," Shadow said, "so I hope you can actually teach me how to use this energy that's become burned into my mind." Ame laughed, and said,  
"I got headaches for the first couple of weeks after I came here; all the colors... it didn't help that I could see a whole bunch of colors that I didn't see when... never mind. Anyway, to shielding. Concentrate some energy around yourself, and make it into some sort of closed shape- I like circles, they're pretty- so that nothing can get through. I'll throw a darkball at you and see how your shields hold. Go ahead, and tell me when you're ready."


	5. Energy Strings and Good Shields

Chapter Five: Energy Strings and Good Shields

Shadow looked at the energy around him, which seemed so foreign. Then he saw a crimson line, and something about it felt... right. He mentally pulled from the crimson line, the same way he would from a chaos emerald, and concentrated on making a shield. He decided a cube would be easily defensible; he could move it around to have the points deflect an attack; and back attacks could be guarded against in the same way. He felt the crimson energy harden into the form he wanted it to become, and the sided became uniform in size and thickness. He this shape for a moment to make sure he could keep it, and let the energy go. He then recreated the shield, and held it for another moment, but this time kept it up.

"I'm ready," he said to Ame. She nodded, saying,

"Cube on its side, that's a good form; and you used one color of energy for unity. It's much better than my first shield. Well, we'll see how good it is soon enough. Just a quick lesson, to see if your shield can hold up against time..." Shadow sighed in annoyance.

"A darkball is the standard measure of power in the X-realm. It takes one darkball to bring yourself back to life. People with a clear aura have two darkballs' worth of energy. I've never seen someone that had a clear aura last more than two seconds in the X-realm, the energy around them swallows all their energy and they die. Next is white, which has four, pink with eight, red with 16... up the rainbow spectrum in powers of two, yada yada yada.

There are fifteen rainbow spectrum colors that make up energy lines. Then, you have the non-rainbow spectrum colors. Thus far, there have been fifteen discovered... there are probably more; nobody's gotten to them yet.. I can see all fifteen... I used to could only see one, the lowest one, which is Sheki. At the time, I only had about sixty-five thousand darkballs worth of energy."

"So, in the non-rainbows, they multiply by two, still?" Shadow asked. Ame nodded.

"So your power level right now is at least 1,073,741,824 darkballs." Ame stared, and said a word that Shadow didn't understand.

"What?" he asked her, "Are you babbling in shock or something? I was created to be able to do calculations like that quickly." Ame laughed slightly, still surprised, and replied,

"I said lolwut, it's internet lingo from the dimension I'm originally from." Shadow said,

"I noticed that there aren't any computers in this dimension." Ame replied,

"Actually, there are three in existence. Electronics don't usually work here; the magic fucks them up. The three people that have computers have shielding around them so they won't be destroyed." Ame then smiled, pointed a finger at Shadow, and a black ball of energy flew at him. He reacted quickly, pointing a corner of the shield at the incoming attack, which reflected off of the shield and moved towards Ame. She put a hand up in the way of the ball, and when the ball hit her hand it disappeared.

"I absorb this shit," she said, "when I have enough time to figure out it's coming towards me. Ok, good. Now, you test mine. Collect some energy, and shoot it at me. If you need to form it in front of you for a minute, that's cool. I know you'd rather outdo me, but it'd be a miracle if you did."

Shadow was about to pull on the familiar crimson line when his eyes caught a gold one. It was as if the line were yelling, 'pick me, pick me!' at him. He obliged, and gathered the gold around him, and with a flick of his wrist sent the energy towards her. He didn't understand how gold energy became a black ball. It flew towards Ame, but stopped about four feet away from her, and disappeared. She nodded appreciatively, but said,

"Ha. It still took you more effort to send it at me. And my shields were better." Shadow asked,

"Shields? Can someone like you concentrate on more than one shield at once?" Ame smiled, and responded,

"Touche. No, I normally can't, but it's instinctive for me since I've had these shields up for a while. So, you pulled on the gold energy this time. Any reason why?" Shadow replied,

"I now understand why you personified the energy lines. The do seem to have personalities, or at least shades of personalities." Ame smiled brightly, but said nothing.

At that moment the childlike teacher yelled,

"Ok everyone, stop! Now I'm going to give you the real test. I'm going to send a spell at you that raises the most extreme emotion you're capable of, and then I'm going to shoot an attack at you; the strength will be based on your power level. The spell I'm going to send at you is also going to show what the emotion is and how strong it is.

The intensity of the color is how strong the emotion is. Your aura will glow red for anger, blue for sadness, and yellow for happiness- or lust. If by some chance you have all three, it'll be white. If one of you loses control of your energy completely - which hasn't happened yet in a couple thousand years of classes, thankfully - it'll turn black. Oh, and one more thing. If the emotion is directed towards someone, their aura will change to the same color."

Ame's eyes widened in fear, and she said aloud, trying to control her voice but it still shook a bit,

"Yeah, if you incite my strongest emotion, I promise you I will lose control of my magic. Please, don't make me do this." The teacher said,

"Ame, this room is well shielded, and besides, you've got enough energy to bring anyone back to life that dies. So what's the harm? You're still doing it. I'll give everyone time to control the emotion and their power before I attack them- which is much nicer than an actual combat situation." Ame bowed her head, and sighed, still shaking in fear. Her usually white face had a tinge of pink on it for a moment, but she shook her head vigorously and it disappeared.


	6. Strong Emotions and Little Control

Chapter Six: Strong Emotions and Little Control

The teacher said,

"Ok, I'm going to do this by power level, from lowest to highest." Someone said fairly loudly,

"I bet you five days of classes of homework that the new guy is first." Nobody wanted to bet against him, it seemed, until Ame said,

"I bet you twice that amount that Shadow is second to last." Everyone stared at Ame.

"Come on," the first guy said, "He's new, and he's an outlander; there's no way he's above yellow, maybe blue if he's got a lot of potential. I'll take your bet." Ame said,

"You have no idea who he is or what he can do. I feel sorry for you, because my homework schedule is really tough." The guy smirked at her, and she ignored him.

The first was a girl with green potential; her strong emotion was lust; her aura flared yellow and she made eyes at one of the males in the classroom, who blushed and his aura turned yellow, but when the teacher sent the dark ball at her she concentrated on it and deflected it easily.

Eventually, the class was tested, and very few failed the test. Eventually, the teacher got to Shadow. Ame smirked, and said,

"Looks like I'm going to have a break from homework for the week... everybody else but me has already gone." Shadow stepped forward, and waited for the spell. It hadn't affected most of the class too much; most of them got distracted by the emotion at just the wrong moment. He figured it'd be the same way for him. When the ball hit him, he felt, at the same time, both a screaming anger and a crippling sadness; he had memories flashing through his mind concurrently. His aura glowed a deep, intense purple, an even mixture of red and blue.

He was almost consumed with the emotions when he heard, amongst the chaos of his memories, a voice -Ame's?- say,

"You're able to stand in front of her and block the bullet. Do it, or you both die." Shadow opened his eyes, and saw the dark ball coming towards him, and he used his gloved hand to slam it to the side- it almost hit someone- and instantly the emotions were gone, leaving him exhausted inside. He stood, and looked at Ame with a questioning look. Her face was blank of emotion, and she stepped forward to take the test.

The people in the classroom were shocked at the intensity of emotions and the strength of the power that swirled around Shadow, and they realized that if Ame hadn't said whatever it was she had said, they could very well have been killed. They knew Ame was more powerful than him; but they didn't fear her as much; she was a cheerful if sarcastic person. She didn't have the aura of someone who would have strong emotions. Ame took a deep breath, released it, and said to the teacher,

"I am as ready as I am going to be." The teacher nodded, and sent the spell towards her.

Memories assaulted her as well.

First was anger.

_"Don't you dare talk back to me!" Whap! The belt hit her thigh, and left marks that lasted for two weeks. _

_"I don't care if the temperature is in the single digits and you're in your nightgown! GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!" More memories of the abuse her mother had given her in her first life assaulted her. And then her second life, in the X-realm. _

_"Please, please, I can't take any more, my body is falling apart!" She begged her tormentor, who replied gleefully,_

_"You're going to let me fuck you until I'm done with you; if your body falls apart I'll bring it back to life!" The whip fell across her body again, and her voice finally stopped screaming as she died- only to be brought back again, and tortured again. And another memory... _

_"I swear, if you ever do that to this realm again, I will break and destroy your soul! How dare you turn the X-realm into your little playground, and make it too weak to fight!" So angry, she wanted to fucking kill something. _

But as soon as she thought that, the depression came.

_"I... can't move... why won't God let me die? I can't stand any more of this... my mind betrays me, pulling me down into these depths of depression... I want it to end... but it'll never end while I'm alive..." _

_"No, no, there's nobody left to trust! The one person that cared about me, and now she's gone... I didn't even get to say farewell... and momma says it's my fault..." The mind-numbing depression that refused to give way to sleep, leaving her a zombie for days on end..._

But, strangely, there was happiness.

_"I'm finally... over..." she had said as the blood flowed from her wrist; the tenth try was the charm. _

_"You called me back! OMG, you gotta tell me what's been going on!" It was the call of a long-lost friend who had moved to another state. There was the feeling of listening to a good song, sitting outside in the moonlight, the grass tickling her face; there were small things in life that made her smile._

And then, lust. Shadow. Despite the divide in their species, despite the fact she was morally against that kind of attraction, she felt the unmistakable signs of lust; and even more embarrassingly, had shown them fairly obviously. If he hadn't seen the obvious blushes on her face, then there were clues from what was said in their classes he would have picked up on, as smart as he was. But he hadn't said anything; if anything, he had become more friendly with her as the day had passed. She thought about what would happen if the attraction were returned... No, no, no!!!

As she tried to block that emotion, the others caught up with her, and she felt them all at the same time. Her aura, which had gone from red to purple, had turned white; it was a blinding bright light; pure as new-fallen snow.

And, as her emotions fell out of control, she started to lose control. Panicking, she drew on her life energy to seal off the emotions, and then realized that she hadn't fed in a day... Suddenly, there was an incredible blood lust; she lost control, her aura turning grayer, and as her eyes glazed over and she started shaking, turned black. The energy surrounding her went into a frenzy; it was is if it were a mob running in all directions. There were no lines; just dots, and the darker her aura got, the wider the area of crazed energy went.

The emotions concentrated into a few points. She was starving; she was about to go into the stage of vampire starvation where her blood vessels began to burst one by one. Anger at herself for not being to control her emotions, her aura, or her body, and most of all at the damned to nine hells lust; and then there was sadness, because it could never work out, that sort of relationship, if there ever was one, because of the differences were too great.

When the emotions congealed together, Ame's aura turned white for a minute, and the teacher saw this as a sign that she had gained control. She shot the powerful -sheki- energy ball at Ame, and...

It hit.


	7. Death's Pain and Strange Realization

Chapter Seven: Death's Pain and Strange Realization

The balance she had managed to scrape together in her mind shattered in the pain that spread from the impact to her chest; she had never, in all the times she had been tortured and raped, and died by her blood vessels rupturing one by one because she forgot to feed, felt this much pain before. She collapsed, still conscious but not sane, She was quiet for a moment, and everyone who had been holding their breath, released it, and looked around. It was then that they stared at Shadow. Somebody muttered, "What the fuck...?"

It was an unmistakable yellow aura around Shadow. He looked around himself and saw the color of the aura, and, remembering the first girl who had been tested, realized what it meant. His heart stopped for a moment. Oh. The blushes, the aura swirling- her shields going out of control, he now realized- it all made sense now. The blushes were so similar to those of Maria, he should have known what they meant. Not that he understood emotions well... especially his own. Which of course what the problem was, at the moment. He had no idea how he felt, and tried to grasp for a familiar emotion but all the feelings left him.

It was a few moments later when the first of Ame's blood vessels started to pop. It took a minute for the pain to register, for the vessels to be large enough for their destruction to hurt enough for the pain to be felt. She screamed, which she hadn't done until this point; but it was more a moan of despair than anything else. Everyone in the room was affected in one way or another by the sound that came from her throat. The teacher said,

"She's drained most of her life energy... she's dying... her blood vessels are bursting... Unless she can gain control of that energy she's collected, she's going to die."

It was like a miniature version of the way he felt when Maria died; he barely knew Ame, but somehow in witnessing the pain she had gone through, seeing the sadness and anger in her face earlier, something had clicked. They were similar. He had only met one person that had more than skin-deep emotional depth, and that was Maria. But now, this girl... she was incredibly different from Maria, almost the opposite of the sweet, innocent blond; but they had one thing in common: they had been the only two people that had looked at Shadow and had seen something worth caring for. And it was with that realization that Shadow knew he wouldn't let this one die.

He walked toward Ame, unsure of what he would do, fighting the current of energy that was trying to drag him into the sea of pain; trying to drain the energy from him as it drained the energy from the air. He remembered what Ame had said about a clear-aura'd person being absorbed by the X-realm; it felt like the rogue magic around him would do the same if he didn't fight it. He noticed the people around him, staring at him like he was crazy (he would have done the same thing, had it been somebody else walking into this mess), but not moving to help. Nobody did.

He remembered the words she had said to him, and how they broke through his emotions. But he knew nothing about her past, except that there had been much pain, much sadness, and little happiness. She was sitting, cross-legged, her head balanced on her chest, now quiet, just randomly twitching as blood vessels burst more rapidly. There was little time left. Sitting like this, she was about a foot shorter than he was.

"Ame," he said softly. Her eyes lifted a little, but a twitch later, they had fallen back down and stared blankly at the floor.

'Well,' he thought to himself, 'I got a reaction from her. That's more than I expected.' But he had to think of something else.

He touched her upturned hand, and she lifted her head and looked at him, trying to stay focused. She tried to tighten her hand around his, but too many of the muscles had died; her hand twitched and almost grabbed his hand, but it relaxed. He saw her intention, and held her hand. He didn't really understand why he was acting, he just was. She gathered strength and spoke.

"I need... help. I can't... hold on to the real word... there's too much..."

More memories, but all of them of her first life, the one she had ended too soon. She didn't want them, and she didn't have the strength to push them away.

_"Go to your room, and stay there. Don't even come out to use the bathroom," her mother had said angrily. _

_"How long?"the young Ame had asked. _

_"I'll get you when we go to bed,"her mother replied coldly. "But I can't hold it for that long! I'm only six!"she protested._

_"You should have thought about that before you stole all of those cookies from the kitchen," her mother replied. Ame remembered having to use a couple of water bottles to pee in later that afternoon; she wasn't about to leave her room when her mother was __that__ angry._

_"Your father is going to die because of you; you made him mad and he had a stroke, and now he's going to die." _

_"But momma, you yelled at me first!" Ame had protested, feeling that the situation was unfair. _

_"Damn... I thought there was enough of this poison to kill me... I should have died... Does God have some reason to keep me alive?" She had asked, an hour after the second time she had attempted suicide with this type of poison._

_ "Jason, I--" Ame was about to say something she had been too scared to say for months._

_"I know what you're going to say, and I don't like you like that. I wish you'd just go away and leave me alone. You're making me and yourself look bad by doing this, and I hope you don't speak to me again," her first guy crush had said coldly to her, the day before her sixteenth birthday._

_"Who's that, Charlie?"Ame asked, looking through the pictures of her then-boyfriend._

_"Oh, him?" Charlie replied laughingly, "He's the anti-sonic. He's a fucking emo pussy, and he's all overpowered and stuff. And it's obvious that he's a Mary Sue, he's even colored red and black to match his angsty soul."_

_"Charlie," Ame had protested, I'm an emo, and I like red and black, so nyah. Seriously, who is he, what's his back story?" Charlie then replied,_

_"His name is Shadow, and..."_

Ame started, and suddenly realized what to do. Duh. It's elementary X-realm magic, for those who walked the darker path. Sex creates energy, sexual attraction, when focused on properly, can renew your energy and make it easy to control. She smiled, and, much to Shadow's surprise and bewilderment, kissed him lightly on the mouth. Suddenly, the energy that had been spiraling outward had spiraled inward, and she channeled it into herself, quickly converting most of it into life energy and leaving the rest to heal the blood vessels; after a few minutes she got on her knees, and looked at Shadow, a strange look on her face.

"Shadow, why haven't you said anything about it?" Shadow replied,

"About wha... oh. That," he said, slightly unbalanced.

"Yes, that. I've been fucking obvious about it all day, much to my embarrassment, and you didn't say anything about it, making me more and more nervous every moment. What the hell were you thinking?!" Shadow blinked, blinked again, and answered,

"It wasn't until my aura lit up bright yellow that I figured it out." Ame laughed, on the edge of hysteria, and replied,

"Are you fucking kidding me? No, don't answer that, I already know. How dense can a person be? Shadow, you fail at emotional intelligence." Shadow replied,

"You fail at emotional control, which has caused much more trouble." At this point, the class returned to their senses, and started laughing. Ame stuck her tongue out at him, and said,

"I EPIC fail at life, and since there's no worse insult for me, I have won by losing. NYAH." Shadow laughed slightly, his face still burning from the kiss...

"But, anyway... did I pass?" The teacher looked at Ame incredulously, and finally said,

"You didn't pass the test, no... but... I'll give you the full grade in extra credit for not blowing us apart with all of that, I think. Is that a good compromise?" Ame nodded, and stood up. She was emotionally, mentally, physically, and magically exhausted. She sat in her desk, put her head down, and went to sleep. The teacher said,

"Haha, she's only got about five minutes for that; fourth period is next." So, when the bell rang for fourth period, Ame looked around, sat up in her seat, and said,

"I'm fucking skipping the next motherfucking class, so fuck you if you fucking want to try and fucking convince me to go to my fucking fourth period class... Fucker." She giggled at her statement, picked up her books, and went towards the door.

Shadow ended up having to catch up with her (which was not difficult at all), and he asked, "Why'd you leave so quickly?" Ame replied snappishly,

"I'm not fucking Amy Rose, I'm not going to chase you around the dimension." Shadow grabbed her wrist, and looked into her eyes.

"How do you know who she is? How did you know to say what you said to me when I was about to lose control?" Ame's face darkened, and she looked away from his crimson eyes.

"Please... don't..." Shadow frowned, and replied,

"So you have a crush on me, are possibly in love with me, and yet you are keeping secrets from me. Somehow, there is a disconnect, isn't there?" Ame slumped, and leaned against the wall behind her. The (considerably thinned) strings of magic pulled inward, and she simply looked at the angry hedgehog.

He knew he wasn't going to get anything out of her here, and now, but...

"You're not going to get out of this, Ame," he said in a low voice, "I want the truth, and I hate having secrets kept from me. You are exhausted now, I understand, so I'll leave you be for now, but I will get the truth from you eventually."

He let go of her wrist, which now had red marks where his hand had been. Ame looked him in the eyes again, and replied sadly,

"I know, Shadow, I know. And when that day comes, I will mourn it with all of my heart. It's been a long time since anyone gave a shit about me... since I was alive the first time... and if you know the truth, you will hate me. Please, let me have a little bit of happiness before secrets are revealed." She turned, and walked away slowly, head hung low.

They didn't talk in their next class, or in the next three. Shadow's anger subsided over the day, but Ame's depression grew. She knew that there would be no happiness until she told the truth; Shadow was the kind of person who didn't trust easily and didn't easily get over having his trust betrayed. But when he did know the truth, there would be even more grief. But... 'Best get it over with,' she thought to herself, 'before I drive myself into a long-term depression.'

So, at the end of their eighth and final class, Ame said to Shadow,

"You're welcome to walk home with me; I don't live too far from here." Shadow looked at her, surprised she had said anything to him. He was also surprised at the sadness in her voice; had her unhappiness not subsided like his anger had? He asked,

"Any reason in particular?" Ame nodded, but said nothing. She grabbed her books, and walked out the door.

Shadow followed at a slight distance as she walked out the gates of the school, and down the street about 12 blocks. There was a small house there; unlike the wildly colored houses surrounding it, it was made of brick. It was surrounded by a fence, and a gate, which Ame opened and stepped through. She then looked at Shadow, who hadn't thought she had known he was there. She gestured towards the door of house, and shrugged. She went in that door, leaving Shadow to make a decision. It didn't take long to make this decision; he had nowhere else to go, and he had a sneaking suspicion that he would learn a lot if he accepted her hospitality.


	8. Earth House and Secret Revealed

Chapter Eight: Earth House and Secret Revealed

Shadow had seen pictures of houses from Earth when he had lived on the Space Colony Ark; and the inside of Ame's house looked quite similar to one of the pictures he had seen. She had set food out on the bar- two servings, he noticed. It was milk and cookies, a very familiar food (as it had been Maria's favorite snack), which was a nice change after the strange concoctions served at the Academy's cafeteria. He sat across from Ame, where the extra food was put out, and ate some of it. Ame dipped the cookies in her milk, which he had half-expected, despite her being from a foreign dimension.

He eventually said,

"This house looks like one that would be built on the world that I come from. The food is the same, as well." Ame swallowed a bite of the black, cream-filled cookie, and replied,

"But I'm not from your world. I'm from Earth, yes, but it's a different dimension's Earth." Shadow asked,

"Do you have a space colony orbiting yours?" Ame shook her head, and replied,

"No, we don't. They're building a space station, but it just looks like a bunch of mirrors... I don't think anyone lives there. Shadow, just ask the question you're intending on asking, ok?" Shadow was surprised at the hint of annoyance in her voice; hadn't she been trying to hide this information from him only hours before? He finally answered,

"Fine, as you wish. How do you know about my world? And my past?" Ame sighed, and finished the last of her milk.

"Follow me," she said, getting up off her chair.

She went to the back of the house, to a fair-sized bedroom, where there was -to Shadow's surprise- a computer. It was very different from the ones he had gotten used to seeing on Ark; it looked archaic- but it was small and thin, small enough to sit with and use; it had no tower, and the screen was a screen, not a monitor.

"It's called a laptop; it's before your time, and it holds all kinds of stuff on it." She turned the machine on, and waited on it to load. Shadow smirked at the load-time; the computer _was_before his time. After a while, it loaded, and she clicked on a few icons on the screen, and moved the laptop so he could see.

In small icons on the screen, were various pictures of him and others in his dimension. He looked at them for a moment, and replied,

"So, you showed me this... why? What's the connection?" Ame sighed, and closed the window. "My Earth was aware of your Earth. Except your Earth only exists to us as a video game, comic, and TV show. Everybody in America, just about, knows who Sonic the Hedgehog is." Shadow frowned slightly.

"They would; he's popular in his own world."

Ame rolled her eyes, and replied,

"Yes, my ex-boyfriend was one of the people from my world that loved Sonic. Actually, the memory that broke me out of that... episode... this morning was the memory of him telling me about who you are. Heh, you have quite the fangirl base in that world. Other than Sonic, you're the most popular character from your world." Shadow looked at her in incredulity.

"Are you serious?" Ame laughed, and recalled,

"Yeah, there were girls that would get into fights about who was a bigger fan. I was one of them." Shadow asked, with a sigh,

"I know the answer to this already... but who won these fights?" Ame laughed, and replied,

"I freaked the hell out of people, because nobody went so far as to say they had a crush on you.

That's pretty damn taboo in that culture... actually, it is in the X-realm, too, strangely enough. Once word gets around that I like you, we're going to have trouble with people fucking around with us. As long as it's just words, we'll be ok, but I'm worried about what actions they'll take. Shadow, people here are twisted, and anything one can imagine, knows how to do, and has the power to do, can do it. I have that kind of power, I have that kind of knowledge, but I don't use it... except to get revenge.

Which is very rare. But other people... like Akutenshi, for instance, she's famous for what she does to people." Shadow replied,

"As I have heard, both from her lips and Yikomu's; and I am apparently lucky enough that the only thing she's done to me is put me into a school full of rowdy magicians." Ame, with a look of interest, asked,

"Did she say why? It's not like her to do that." Shadow replied,

"To quote her words, 'This one is _her_work ... I'm not looking for that kind of trouble'. I have no idea who _she_is, but she's apparently partially responsible for my being placed in this dimension in the first place."

Ame nodded, and replied, "So, Akutenshi's afraid of _her_; I don't blame her. She's the dimension's avatar, Shadow, and she can do insane things with magic. There's a lot of stuff about her in the textbooks; she's typically the one that deposes of governments that go tyrannical. She goes under a lot of guises, to keep the governments guessing who she is- they never do, not until she reveals herself, which is hilarious- and has the power to fix the X-realm to the way it's supposed to be." Shadow eyed her suspiciously, and replied,

"You seem to know a lot about her, Ame... a bit too much, even for a bookworm like you." Ame shrugged, and replied,

"I pay attention in class. X-realm history is my specialty, along with using powerful magic. Besides, what avatar is as weak as I am? I've got too many weaknesses to kick ass like that." Shadow replied,

"You have enough strengths, though. I _did _pay attention in our first class this morning. I've been watching; I see others use small magics to get to class on time by Chaos-- instant transportation, I mean." Ame laughed, and said,

"Dude, I know what freaking Chaos Control is; I freaking know that you had the green Chaos Emerald with you when you met Sonic for the first time." Shadow looked at her, an eyebrow raised, and said,

"You're obsessed. How do you remember things like that when you haven't lived in that world for billions of years?" Ame laughed, and replied,

"I fail at life; I've already told you that." Shadow replied,

"You've told me that, and yet you haven't told me hardly anything about yourself. You one-upped me because you know my past- and somehow remembered it over that period of time- so I feel I need to know about yours." Ame looked at Shadow, and said,

"I'm sitting on the couch for this one. I'll tell you about my first life, the one on Earth, but that's all." Ame turned off the computer, and walked into the living room, where there was a very comfortable couch. They both sat on it; one's back on each arm, facing each other. Ame sighed, and said, "Well, here you go..."


	9. Past Told and Regrets Had

Chapter Nine: Past Told and Regrets Had

"My name was ******. I was born in '90, and died in '09. My mother had been severely abused as a child, and thus, as the statistics predict, and despite the fact that I think she really did love me, abused me. She didn't get pissed off much, but when she was pissed off, she did horrible things to me. I had a younger brother; he had a mental disorder, and my parents cut him a lot of slack because of it. I had signs of having bipolar disorder-- you know what it is, right?"

Shadow nodded. Manias and depressives that lasted from days to weeks to months, caused by the receptors in nerves producing too much or too little of a certain chemical.

"-- from the time I was little. I had a few other disorders that popped up when I was a little kid, but I didn't get diagnosed until I was a teenager. I eventually got treated for these disorders, but the medication didn't do very much for me.

In my mania episodes, I was hyper, uncontrollable, obnoxious, talkative, unable to string two thoughts together, full of nervous energy. It was annoying both for me and the people around me. Because my behavior was so odd and so pronounced, I never fit in well at schools... my usual response to that was, to quote, 'Fuck them'

My depressives, though, were even worse than the manias. I would be sitting in class, talking to a friend on the phone, eating dinner, whatever, and suddenly my mood would plummet. I could usually sleep it off if I caught it in time, but sometimes... my mother... she'd choose that moment to lay some more emotional abuse on me. I've never had very high self-esteem; I've always had a lot of self-hatred, a lot of guilt, and a lot of it is because of the things my mother has said over the years.

Even now, 14 billion years later, I haven't changed much from who I was then. But... when my mother pulled the emotional torture-sometimes she'd make me sit in a chair for six hours while she told me exactly what is wrong with me and how I'll never fix it and I'll never have a good life, blah blah blah. If I wasn't in a depressive, I'd just ignore it and go on my way.

But in the depressives, I listened and believed. I thought I was this horrible person, and believing the things that my mother accused me of, I spiraled down into despair. It was a regular thing for a few years, before I got diagnosed with bipolar. I started cutting myself; it was my way of punishing myself for the things I had done to deserve what my mother had said.

I brought the debilitating pain- truly debilitating, some days I was barely able to move to pick up the knife or the razor- from the inside to the outside, and that way I could temporarily heal the pain on the inside. I did this so I wouldn't cry; for I learned from a young age that to cry was a crime; a show that you are selfish enough to cry over your problems when others have worse problems than yours."

Ame paused, and said,

"I need some ice cream, I'm sorry; it's been a long day and I'm really getting depressed from this." Shadow nodded, and she went to get some ice cream out of the fridge.

"You want some?" she called from the kitchen. Shadow had only had ice cream a few times on Ark, since the freezers were typically used for the experiments of the scientists.

"Sure," he answered back. He heard the freezer door open, and her cry of,

"Damn, it's cold!" He snickered, and then contemplated a bit.

Ame placed a lot of blame on her mother, and on her bipolar; on the surface, it looked like she put none on herself. But a few of the comments she made... And some things she had said to him that morning... There was self-hatred there, raw and unhealed but carefully covered up in public. He suspected that her flippant attitude that she had taken on when they first met was a mask-- a well constructed one; he certainly fell for it. But that incident this morning... she had shown vulnerability; her walls had come crashing down- causing no little amount of damage.

'Actually,' he thought to himself, 'she's probably got the mask on right now. Nobody who goes through that kind of experience gets right back up and jokes around without some severe self-control.'

At that moment, Ame came back to the couch with the ice cream. It was green with black specks in it. Shadow asked,

"Is this ice cream? I thought it was brown or white." Ame laughed, and replied,

"You lived with a kid your whole life and didn't see but two flavors of ice cream? Shame, shame. This is mint chocolate chip; it is my favorite food ever created. I really hope you like it." Shadow replied,

"If I don't, you can have my share. I suspect you'd take it even if I didn't offer it to you, however." Ame nodded, and took a huge bite of the ice cream, chewed slowly, and swallowed.

"Don't take a big bite like I just did; you'll get brain freeze. I'm immune to brain freeze, luckily." Shadow took a spoon of ice cream from the bowl, and looked at it. He took a bite. He liked it; it tasted like nothing he'd ever had before... it was sweet, cold, and good.

"You're not having my portion," he said, "and if you try to steal it I'll fight you for it." Ame giggled, and replied,

"You like it that much? If we got into a fight, it'd be all melted before we got finished with the fight." Ame sighed, and said,

"Well, break is over. You want to know about my first life because I already knew about yours, so it's only fair for me to give you what you want in this case."

"Well, eventually my mother noticed the cutting-- after I had huge, deep cuts on my legs that couldn't be covered up by the only clean pair of pants I had.

Off I was shipped to the mental hospital, where me and my mother were locked in a little room by the psychos that ran the place. But, once we got out, my mom and dad took me to get ice cream-which they never did, they're health nuts- and took me to a bookstore, and let me buy a manga- which also was a first; they'd banned me from anime a few years before. On the car trip back, my mother promised me that if I ever got suicidal or wanted to cut again, to tell her, and she'd understand, and find real help for me.

I made the mistake of believing this promise, so the next time I cut, I told her. She laid the usual bullshit on me, but then said,

"You're trying to emotionally blackmail me into getting your way. I've figured it out now. Well, you know what, two can play that game." So, she gets a knife, and, in front of me and my father, cuts herself in the same place I cut myself.

It was my thirteenth birthday. It was the first time I attempted suicide. There was a common weed that grew outside; it's extremely poisonous unless you cook it right. Three leaves or two inches of stem were enough to kill a human. I ate maybe six leaves and half a foot of stem, raw. I didn't get a stomach ache, which is the mildest symptom of that kind of poisoning. When I got out of the depressive episode, I got really pissed off about it."

Shadow shook his head, the thought of someone being angry that a suicide attempt had failed had never crossed his mind.

"I tried that same thing again, a couple of years later-- it didn't work, again. I'm apparently immune to that kind of poisoning." Shadow asked,

"How many times did you try to kill yourself, and over how many years? Seriously, were you that determined to end your life?" Ame counted on her fingers, and replied,

"Ten times over five years. Fast forward to my freshman year of college. I had just gotten out of an emotionally abusive, long-running relationship; my grades were terrible, I was likely to lose my scholarship and had no other way to pay for college, the economy sucked and I couldn't get a job, my father had died of a stroke and the only family income had stopped coming in, my mother couldn't-- or, rather, wouldn't-- work, so I would have to be the one to support her and my brother, but I couldn't get a job... I had been in a five month depressive episode and I thought I'd never get out of it, and then one day my mother gives me a phone call... and that was it. I found a large knife, and sliced my wrist lengthwise, and died. And then, I woke up in the X-realm."

"The last part of your life sounds like a badly-written story," commented Shadow. Ame laughed sadly, and replied,

"My whole fucking life--both of them-- is like a badly written soap opera." At this point, they had both finished their ice creams, so Ame put them in the sink, washed them a bit, and put them into the dishwasher.

"It sure is late," she commented, looking out the window, "The sun's going down." Shadow, for once remembering his manners, asked her,

"Ame, I don't have a place to stay... can I take your couch?" Ame walked back in, and replied, "This is a three-bedroom house, take a bed." She paused, and opened her mouth as if to say something, but then closed it, and blushed slightly. Shadow smirked, and commented,

"I know what those blushes mean, now. You were going to say something to the effect of my being welcome in your bed." Ame buried her face in her hands, but the blush had spread to her ears and her neck, a non-verbal affirmative. She eventually lifted her head, and said quietly,

"I'm sorry I have these feelings... it's probably making you uncomfortable... I know what it's doing to me, and..." For a second, Shadow thought he saw her eyes water a bit, but they cleared up too quickly to be sure.


	10. A Fight and A Laptop

Chapter Ten: A Fight and A Laptop

Shadow eventually replied,

"I wasn't created to reproduce... I am physically incapable of feeling sexual urges." He was expecting some sort of negative reaction: maybe for her to turn away, maybe a tear... he knew enough about emotions to know that what he had just said to her was, essentially, a rejection, and that for someone as obsessed as she obviously was, it would be a large blow. Instead, Ame laughed, and replied,

"You lucky bastard. You have all the benefits of being alive, and very few of the disadvantages. I'm going to have to start picking on you, or something, to even out the score." She shot a dark ball at him, which he deflected. He did the same, and very soon, they were outside fighting with the magic that surrounded them.

"Nyah, nyah, you gotta be faster than that," taunted Ame.

"You want fast?" challenged Shadow, as he went into spinball form and charged into her at an incredible speed. He was expecting to be blocked by her shields, but, instead, he slammed into her, and she fell back about fifteen feet. He ran over to her, and asked,

"Are you all right? I didn't realize you wouldn't shield against that." Ame got off of the ground, licked the blood off a scratch, and replied,

"I don't usually have much in the way of shields against physical attacks, other than to make rapists really regret fucking me. It wastes a lot of energy that I'd be using to attack or convert into life energy." Shadow smiled slightly, and asked,

"Are most X-realmers similarly unshielded?" Ame looked at Shadow, and grinned, saying,

"Yes, they are; and most of them don't know how to take a hit. I grew up Mortal-realmer, I've dealt with getting into physical fights before, but these guys stick to their magic. Shadow, you are going to PWN if you ever get into a real fight!" Shadow asked,

"Pwn? Is that more of your internet lingo?" Ame nodded, and replied,

"So is fail, epic fail, win, for the win, and several others I use in daily speech. Arkanto doesn't have exact translations for the internet memes, so I get to say 'em in English." Shadow rolled his eyes and shook his head.

It was that flippant, playful attitude again; it made Shadow want to scream at her to stop faking. Ame saw the twitch of anger in his face, and asked,

"What's bugging you? You just won the fight. What made you have that pissed off look a second ago? If there's anything I can do about it, I'll do it." Shadow shook his head, and replied,

"I doubt you can do anything about it, so don't worry about it. Let's just go back to the house." Ame sighed, and started heading back towards the house.

'I wonder what his problem is?' she thought to herself, 'He didn't seem upset until just then, and now he's all mad, and I think he's mad at me. But, there and again, he just died and got brought back in this place... the seventh level of fucking hell, I call it... that is where suicide cases go. And his death was technically a suicide; he _asked_Sonic not to save him; he knew he would burn in the atmosphere; no matter what plot device the programmers of SonicHeroesmanaged to come up with. I wish I knew what he was thinking.'

Her thoughts then turned inward, as much as she willed them not to.

'And then here I am... I know I'm frayed, I'm nearly broken. How do I managed to keep my face on with the way I am now?' She entered her house; she didn't see Shadow, but she sensed him in one of the vacant bedrooms.

'I'll just leave him alone; let him get over whatever the fuck his problem is.' Shadow. Damn. 'He's right, I am obsessed with him. I made fun of myself for it way back then, and it's still true now. I'm still a child, in a way... I never grew up all the way. Is that how I can keep my face, my happy with a touch of sarcasm personality, up for so long?'

She sighed as she got some cereal out. She'd always eaten cereal as a kid, typically she ate at least two bowls a day; she kept up the cereal tradition now that she had her own home that she could set up.

'As much as the people in the Mortal Realm thought he was one-dimensional, he's really complex. I wish I could figure him out; it'd be a lot easier for me. I suspected that he wasn't able to have sex or anything like that, but being told that hurt a bit. It should have hurt a lot more. I haven't opened my heart to anyone in all these years... I didn't want another Charlie, especially not an X-realm version of him.

Maybe it doesn't hurt so much not to have a significant other because I haven't had one for so long. And Charlie certainly wasn't that special to begin with. All he wanted from me was sex and emotional support; I wouldn't give him the sex and I expected him to support me back. Well, the sex issue will be non-existent in this little situation, apparently.'

She sat in silence, and ate her cereal, and, eventually, went to her bedroom, covered herself in her 14 billion+ year old sleeping bag. 'How long have I had this green sleeping bag?' she wondered to herself. 'I know I got it for Christmas one year... maybe the year I turned ten? That sounds about right. I guess...' She didn't finish her thought, for she journeyed quickly to the land of Nod.

Shadow calmed down fairly quickly; he wasn't that mad to begin with. He looked up, and realized that Ame had left the computer on. He sat down in front of it; the icons were in a language he didn't understand- probably English- and for a moment, he wondered what to do. Then he came up with an idea. If someone could make him understand a language magically, he might be able to teach the computer... wait. Ame had said something about the computers being shielded from magic because it destroyed them.

He touched the mouse, and suddenly, a pop-up appeared, and read, in Arkanto,

"Unknown user attempting to access files. State your name or computer will self-destruct." Shadow shook his head; was Ame really that paranoid? He stated his name, and the computer screen turned black for a moment, and then loaded a different screen than the one that Ame had. It had fewer icons, for one thing. He clicked on one file with his name on it.

There were pictures; Shadow marveled at the number of pictures she had collected of him, and the amount of dedication it had probably taken to find that many well-drawn pictures in the first place.

There were a couple of games that got decent reviews from her, including one where team Sonic (and somehow he, Rouge, and the robot, Omega ended up joining them) went into space and stole the chaos emeralds and master emerald back from a lost tribe of echidnas; there was a little comment about how much she enjoyed being able to play him, and how he "PWNED" Sonic in battles.

And then was the game titled, "Shadow the Hedgehog". There wasn't much data for this game, but what was there was made him want to laugh at its inanity. And then he reached the comments, which echoed his own thoughts, but in an outrage, in mostly caps: "SHADOW DOESN'T NEED FUCKING GUNS OR MOTORCYCLES!!! HE HAS CHAOS CONTROL! ROUGE DOESN'T SOUND LIKE A 30-SOMETHING BLACK WOMAN, AND SHADOW DOESN'T SOUND LIKE A 40-YEAR-OLD MAN!" ...and so on. ]Ok, continue on...

And then he got to the information from the TV show. He didn't show up for quite a few episodes of the show; and then, in four, 24 minute long segments, the TV show summarized the few days' time that he had been awake after being in stasis for 50 years. Her note, at the end of the summary of the four episodes, was:

"It was at this point that I realized that I had fallen in love with an anthropomorphic hedgehog, despite my moral objections, despite my trying to convince myself I was in love with Charlie, despite everything, I became instantly obsessed... not even my suicide and rebirth changed the way I felt."

"I didn't finish all of the episodes he was in;" she had written of the other block of episodes, "so I don't know exactly how it ends, but I know that he doesn't die and that he goes super and kicks ass. He comes in and saves Sonic's ass three or four times in the space of as many episodes, and saves some random girl twice soon afterward, even though he is an amnesiac. This leads me to believe that, despite the fact that he was created, not born, he has just as much- or perhaps more- of a soul than any of us that were born."

Shadow was startled by the last sentence. He had wondered sometimes about whether he really had a soul, or if he just had superior AI, like those two crony robots of Eggman's (Decoe and Bocoe). Like Maria, Ame had believed that he was truly alive, that he had a soul, and could make choices based on his sentience, rather than by his programming.


	11. Brutal Rape and No Emotion

Chapter Eleven: Brutal Rape and No Emotion

AN: A warning: This chapter, amongst all the others, is the one that makes this fic have a Mature rating. Don't read it if you don't think you can stomach it. It's not that graphic, but… I still feel nervous putting it up here in the first place.

They both woke up that morning, feeling better than they had the day before. Ame was groggy; she explained to a perfectly awake Shadow that it took her about thirty minutes for her cognitive processes to work. She sat at the bar in her nightgown, eating an extremely large bowl of cereal that she kept refilling.

"There's one advantage to being a vampire that's underrated," she commented between bites, "we lose our life energy so quickly, we pull energy from our bodies- thus, we stay skinny, no matter what." Shadow said nothing, not knowing what to say to a comment like that.

Ame got ready for school while Shadow waited- he didn't feel like walking the streets alone;

he'd rather not run into someone with a reputation like Akutenshi's alone-- nor did he want Ame to do so. She eventually appeared in a different outfit and hairstyle from the previous one, picked up her books, and headed out the door. Shadow walked with her to school; they talked some about their various classes. Shadow didn't understand why Ame was in school in the first place; it was obvious that she knew everything that was being taught and she had good control of her magic, as well.

"Ame, why are you even in school? You are obviously bored with it, and you don't need to go in the first place." Ame shrugged, and replied,

"I dunno, school gives me a schedule to follow and a habit to have. I've always been change averse, so I like having something stable to do, something to keep me occupied everyday." Shadow believed that was the most concise answer the evasive Ame had ever given to a question.

They walked a bit more, and Ame said,

"You used the computer in there, didn't you? I know you did; it'd be too great a temptation." Shadow looked at her, and replied,

"Yes, I did; some of what I found amused me." Ame laughed, and replied,

"Probably some of my outraged comments in all caps, yes?" Shadow smiled, and nodded, saying,

"You were outraged by the same things that amused me. Guns aren't fast enough, nor are they powerful enough. Same thing with motorcycles." Ame nodded, and replied,

"Yup, I figured you'd be all calm and amused about it. Well, here we are." They walked in the doors of the stone building.

After walking fifty feet or so, they noticed that the atmosphere in the school had changed since the previous day.

"I don't like the looks they're giving us," Ame said in a hushed tone, "I think word has gotten around school that I'm breaking a taboo. Since we're hanging out, everyone will assume we're in a relationship." Shadow replied,

"That's quite the assumption for you to make, considering all you've seen is looks. They might be wary after your magical explosion yesterday." Ame laughed, and replied,

"If only that were true. No, I've had one a couple of times before; everyone treated me about the same, except there were a bit fewer snide comments made about me in class.

The day went uneventfully until lunch, when Ame and Shadow went to sit at the lunch table (neither of them opted to eat the strange-looking food that was being served.) Suddenly, they were both grabbed from behind, and had their hands fastened together with magical ropes. Shadow attempted to untie them with his own magic, but was lashed at with another rope of magic.

A guy, about eighteen, walked up to them, and said,

"Ya know, I heard something interesting about y'all this mornin'." Shadow responded,

"And that would be...?" "That yer fuckin' each other, outta species, poisoning the magic pool. You might be able to get away wi' that whateva outland yer from, but here it don' work like 'at."

He pointed at Shadow, who suddenly felt as if a blanket had been wrapped around him; except it was his magic that was being smothered. He couldn't tap it at all.

The guy walked towards Ame and said,

"Ya need to stick to your own race, honey; vampires are good enough at it. You want a demonstration? What? We, ya got one anyway." He ripped off her shirt and her bra, leaving her chest bare, her breasts showing. Ame's face was expressionless, carefully controlled not to give away any hint of emotion. Shadow wanted to look away, but the one that was holding him forced his head in her direction, and said,

"What you turning away for? You've already seen it, dirty animal; you've spoiled some valuable goods. We figure we need to teach her not to waste herself." Shadow's eyes narrowed in fury; his magic chafed against its constraints, and he was too well bound to fight physically.

"You will pay," he said in a low, dangerous voice.

"Oh, really?" asked the man who had torn Ame's shirt off, "I doubt it. You're next, beast." Shadow's eyes narrowed, and he said,

"Good luck with that; you'll be dead before you even have a chance to try."

"And fail," Ame said with a slight smile, one that was erased by the open-handed slap delivered to her face.

"You shut up, slut; you're my prisoner, and the only noises you're allowed to make are moans of pleasure."

He savagely bit her nipple, and chewed on it, and then the other one; he scratched his nails down her chest and arms, and said,

"See, you're damaged goods. You can't even enjoy this, you little whore."

'It means I'm not a masochist, stupid bastard,' Ame thought to herself while trying to block the pain. The physical pain wasn't too terrible, it was a tiny pinprick compared to the pain she had experienced the day before. What hurt was the fact that she was being raped, the fact that someone was controlling her fate for the next while, the fact that something was being stolen from her. She couldn't access her magic, and she knew why, and she hated it.

He eventually got bored with the upper half of her body and her lack of response, so he ripped her pants and underwear off next, pushed her to the floor, and forced her legs open- though it took a minute to do so, he eventually managed. It was then that his clothes came off, his penis revved up and ready to go.

He pushed it in her roughly, and a small grunt of pain escaped her throat.

"Wow, ya hear that, boys?" He called to his cronies, "She's really enjoying it!" He fucked her body hard, and after a while you could see blood on the floor where he was tearing her apart. She made no more reaction after the initial thrust, so after the guy came, he got tired of her, and withdrew, pulling his pants on. Addressing the crowd that had gathered around the scene, he said,

"This vampire girl defiled her body with this... animal; and she deserves to be punished. Anyone else want a try?"

It was that point when Shadow had reached his breaking point. With a surge of adrenaline, he knocked his captive back, pulled apart he magical ropes, and knocked the cronies out. Once they were knocked out, the spell that kept him from using his magic was broken, but he didn't need it now; he'd kill the bastard with his bare hands; raping a girl for any reason was worse than any other crime. Ame struggled to pull her clothes on, and watched as Shadow got ready to attack.

"Shadow," she said, "It's against the law for you to attack him. You're an outlander, you'll be punished for it." Shadow shook his head, and replied,

"He is going to die a slow, painful death. It's only right, and it'll be my joy to do so." Ame replied,

"Shadow, if you do that, you'll be tortured to the point where you don't even remember Maria! You can't risk that kind of punishment; you need those few happy memories you have! I swear this guy will have his due, but now is not the time!" Shadow looked back at her, and then at the guy. He nodded, and calmed his aura down, saying,

"You're right, Ame, this scum isn't worth risking punishment for." Shadow set up a shield with some of his upset aura, and was not pleased that the thickness of the sides was fluctuating. He didn't want to be open for attack.

Ame had, by this point, gotten her clothes on, and the crowd had dispersed to go to fifth period. Ame, checking the time, said,

"We have to get to fifth period; I have a test in there today; I can't show up late." Shadow was incredulous.

"You're worried about classafter what just happened?!" Ame looked at him as she stood up and grabbed her books, and said,

"You think I've never been raped before? I can deal with it. But that bitch is going to be feeling the pain in about two hours... he'll wish he could die. I love my shields sometimes." Shadow looked at her, looking for a trace of the pain that he knew she was feeling. That grunt of pain hadn't been from nothing; it took a lot to make her react to pain. But when he looked into her eyes, he saw nothing. at all. Just a blankness, a closed door, no emotion whatsoever.


	12. Broken Down and Story Told

Chapter Twelve: Broken Down and Story Told

The rest of the day went the same as the first part of the day went, and the two outlanders traveled to Ame's house in silence. Ame wasn't talking, and Shadow didn't want to force her to talk, since he wasn't very fond of talking to begin with. But when they entered the house, Ame said,

"Shadow, I..." The blank look had left her green eyes, and was replaced with pure, unmasked pain. She noticed his crimson eyes widen in surprise; what had happened to make him react like that? She hadn't said anything bad yet. And then she felt it, something she hadn't felt in billions of years... that wave of depression washed over her, and she nearly sank to the floor with the weight of it. The magic surrounding her also dropped, as if it weren't strong enough to bear the burden of her mind. Her facial expression hadn't changed, but her body had become limp; she was barely standing up.

Shadow realized that she was about to break down, and said,

"You need to sit down, or get in a bed, or something."

"Bed," she answered, it was too hard to speak; it was too much labor to breathe; her legs felt like they were made of jelly, but somehow she managed to take the steps to the bedroom, and fell into her bed, her eyes wide open like saucers.

"I'm sitting here with you," he said, sitting on the opposite side of the queen-sized bed, "because you need to stop holding in your emotions and if you let them out too fast you'll destroy yourself." Ame slowly shook her head, but he replied.

"Yes, I am." Ame slowly replied,

"No... I refuse... to be in debt... to anyone... I could never... pay this one... off... ever." But her eyes spoke differently; there was a need, a desperate need for comfort.

"If you let your pride get in your way too much longer, you'll fall apart, and then what will you have to take pride in?"Shadow asked her.

Ame shook her head. "It's not pride...I've been burned... too many times... to trust like that again... after Charlie... I swore... I would never... put myself into a situation... where I would owe them... so much that I destroyed my life... to pay it back." Shadow narrowed an eye.

"Charlie? The same one in your entry on the computer?" Ame's eyes showed fear, then sadness again.

"Yes, that one... I didn't think that entry was in there..." Shadow replied,

"So if what all you've said and written thus far adds up, you felt you were in such a great debt to him you were willing to force yourself to think you were in love with him... but what else did you do to destroy your life?" Ame shook her head. No, she wasn't going to go there. Billions of years had passed, but the memories of her eighteen years on Earth never faded; perhaps this whole existence was punishment for her suicide. At this thought, a tear came to her eye.

"I thought I had no other choice," she said, finding the strength to talk, "I thought I was going to starve to death, with no money, and no food." Shadow asked,

"Are you talking about Charlie or your suicide?" Ame looked into his crimson eyes, and a tear fell.

"Both. Shadow, when I met Charlie, my parents and I were not getting along at all. I started college because I knew I would not be able to live until my eighteenth birthday if I did. Two days after college started, I met this guy, Charlie. He was really cool, and into the same stuff I was. He told me he had a crush on me; I'd never had a guy like me before so I didn't know that was a sign to keep the hell away from him.

We started going out two weeks later. At the end of the one-month semester, there were five days before the second one-month semester began. I was to the point where I was cutting every time I went home, so I refused to go home for five days. My mother then made an ultimatum: I either go home for the next five days, or I never see my family again, I never see a penny of their money; essentially, they'd cut me off. I was certain that if I were home for five days, I would kill myself. So I chose to be cut off, and spent those five days with Charlie and his family." She paused, took a few breaths, and continued.

I came back after the five days, to start the new semester. I didn't have the book for my class- my father refused to pay for it. I didn't have any food- my parents refused to pay for it. I had only a few pills left; after that, my medication would run out, and I would go into withdrawal symptoms from my antidepressants and bipolar medicine. I did manage to get my pills, but I still couldn't get any food. Charlie provided me with food for the month; he provided me with emotional support from June until October, when my parents and I finally made up. I felt I owed him everything he wanted, because I wouldn't have been alive if not for him." Shadow nodded, and replied,

"There was a flip side, of course." Ame nodded, and replied,

"Yes. What he expected in return, and how he treated me... I was a virgin; he was obsessed with sex. I never lost my virginity to him, but I did many other things that I never would have done if I hadn't felt I owed it to him. I had no attraction to him whatsoever; it was horrible to see... what I saw. Not just the physical, but the lust, the possessive nature; I felt like I was a toy he was playing with whenever he did sexual things with me. He wanted so much out of me emotionally, too; I ended up spending all of my time with him, because if I didn't, he would remind me of how much he had done for me, and how selfish it was for me to not pay him back for it."

Shadow raised an eyebrow, and asked,

"How long did you put up with that? Debt or no debt, a person can only pushed so far before they figure out that they have given up enough." Ame replied,

"Six months. It took that long for me to not only realize that being in a relationship with him was a mistake, but that the only way to completely end it would be to cut ties with him. So, I did, and for a while, my life was better... but then, my father died, and you know the rest of that."

Shadow sighed. He wasn't going anywhere with this. She was perfectly willing to talk about the distant past, but refused to talk about the present, the recent past, the things that should be at the top of her mind.


	13. Sad Thoughts and Strange Ideas

Chapter Thirteen: Sad Thoughts and Strange Ideas

Ame closed her eyes and turned her head; she knew what he was trying to do; he was trying to make her open up and spill her emotions, to make her heal some. The eighteen year old would have done it, and would have done it long before now- after all, it was Shadow. But the X-realmer in her refused to show weakness, to anyone; it was too easy for someone to take her emotions, play them, and turn her into their little slave until she found the mental strength to fight back. She swore not to trust again, not to be hurt again, not to open the doors again, not to fall to weakness again...

But... she hurt. It was almost as if her body were splitting with the pain that consumed her mind; the pain of loss, of loneliness, of weariness... her control was cracked and she would lose it, like she had yesterday morning; but that was magical, and could be fixed magically. This... it was the same pain that the medication couldn't take care of all those years ago; it was those neurons firing the wrong way, but amplified by the three extra chromosomes that swam around inside her cells. It was what had driven her to suicide; the depression and the hopeless situation. But this time, if she killed herself, there would be no real death... someone would just bring her back to life for the spite of it.

And then Shadow... why did he care? He didn't feel the same way she did; and never would. They had known each other for... two days? 'But,' she said to herself, 'there was that girl... Molly... he took a liking to her fairly quickly. But, what is the connection, between me, her, and Maria? What is it that made him give a shit about us when nobody else could do the same?'

She didn't understand... everyone else that she had ever tried to get close to had pushed her away; sometimes gently, sometimes brutally, but she had always been rejected by those she needed the most. She was waiting for the time that would eventually come, when Shadow told her to leave him alone. Then she'd have nothing left, and she could quit fighting against this world, this hell, which wanted so badly for her to let go of her struggle so it could claim her as a victim of it's deranged self,this reality which was such a non-reality when she first was "reborn" in it. Well, she may as well ask for what she deserved.

"Shadow?" Ame asked, her voice weighted.

"Yes?" he responded, surprised that she had said anything; he thought she was asleep; her eyes had been closed and she had been quiet for several minutes.

"Why? Why do you even give a shit? Why don't you just leave me alone?" At the last question, Shadow for a moment thought that she was angry, but then realized what it was. She was expecting him to leave, to leave her to her troubles so he could stay out of them, to avoid getting hurt by whatever consequences she thought letting her emotions out would have on her. He finally answered,

"Because you, unlike almost everyone I have ever met, actually think of me as someone to care for. Not as someone to demand things of, not someone to be proud of and experiment on, not someone to fight to entertain yourself, not someone to manipulate to do your bidding. For some reason, you liked me just for being what I am. I will admit, the depth of your... obsession... is..."

"All out fucked up and weird, and hard to comprehend, I know," Ame inserted. Shadow smirked, and replied,

"Yes, that it is. But you're doing your best not to pressure me into doing or saying anything to encourage it... unlike someone we both know." Ame said, through a cough,

"Amy Rose," and laughed slightly, then said,

"So, basically, since I give a shit you're making it your business to give a shit back. But damn, actually wanting to deal with my emotions is taking it too far. If our roles were reversed and you were having a breakdown, I would help, but I'd know I was doing something very risky and very stupid." Shadow raised an eyebrow, and replied,

"So, trying to keep you from imploding is stupid and risky? So is trying to keep the Ark colony from slamming into a planet. But I somehow made it through that, so what's one girl's emotions?" Ame snorted.

"Maria wasn't a teenager yet, was she? If she had been, you'd have known better than to say something stupid like that." The mentioning of Maria's name caused Shadow to close his eyes. It had only been two days... but... so much had happened, he hadn't had much time to think about what had happened before he woke up in this strange place. Perhaps it was better he didn't.

"Memories, right?" Ame questioned him softly, a look of concern in her eyes.

"Yes," he replied, "always. What else can we call our own?" Ame nodded, sighed, looked away, and said,

"You're right, of course. Everything else can be stolen. Innocence, life, sanity, freedom, bodies, souls... but... until they disappear into the sands of time, they are ours for the keeping." She looked back at him, and said,

"You know... I should be happy. Just the idea of getting along this well with you put me in a good mood way back when; I shouldn't be so depressed." Shadow shook his head, and replied,

"It's thoughts like that that put you into the depressions in the first place. Honestly, you put yourself into these spirals." Ame laughed, and sat up- and immediately fell back onto the pillows. "Fuck, try telling that to my brain; it's all like, 'you're going to be depressed no matter what you do.' My mind is stubborn like my personality is. She yawned.

"I want to go to sleep, I'm tired." Shadow sighed. How did she always get away with this? He replied, "

Fine, I'll leave; get some sleep, I'll see you in the morning." She raised an eyebrow at his tone of voice, shrugged, and said,

"All right, I'll see you in the morning."

In the bed he called his own Shadow stared at the white sheet rock ceiling, thinking. Ame always managed to get out of situations with a bit of humor, determination, and a rock-hard will not to let anything get to her. It was pure strength of will that kept her going, he realized, and that was all. He sighed. He hadn't realized that his death would lead to so much trouble. Whoever decided what his fate would be didn't intend for him to rest in peace anytime soon. This strange world was becoming more and more like a prison; and the inmates were insane.

Maria. Akutenshi's judgment of what had happened led him to conclude that Maria, with some unknown power, managed to delay his death by making an open-ended call to other worlds to take him in and give him a second chance. Apparently, only the X-realm had someone strong enough – and willing – to answer this call. But who was it? Ame was a possibility he had entertained; but she was no avatar. Someone was pulling some powerful magical strings, and he didn't like being a marionette, but what could he do about a faceless enemy? Nothing, for now.

Finally, tiredness came, and exhaustion drove him to sleep.


	14. False Calm and No Authority

Chapter Fourteen: False Calm and No Authority

It was the third day of Shadow's second life, and it began much like the day before. Ame ate breakfast, changed clothes, grabbed her books, and they left for school.

"I wonder what fresh hell is in store for us today?" Shadow asked dryly as they walked the twelve blocks to Sarakunoshe Academy. Ame shrugged, and replied,

"It's usually a lot more quiet than it has been in the past couple of days. I'm hoping that's all the drama we get for about the next two weeks; I've had more than enough of this crap." Shadow replied, "I was wondering if things were usually like this; I figured there'd be more chaos if they were." Ame nodded, and replied,

"The X-realm does have quiet days... depending on your definition of quiet. They're not too unpleasant; but if there are too many of them in a row, they put you into a false sense of security. That almost always happens to me, and when shit happens, I'm caught off guard. You arriving here, for example. The past couple of months had been really peaceful; fairly uneventful, but not so much that they were suspiciously so." Shadow smirked, and replied,

"And then your long-time obsession comes and sits by you in your classroom. No wonder you reacted the way you did." Ame shook her head, and replied,

"And you didn't say anything to me the whole morning, despite the fact that I was being embarrassingly obvious about my feelings. That's what Jason did, actually; he waited about four months to finally say something to me; and what he said... wasn't something you say to an infatuated fifteen-year-old with the self-esteem problems he knew I had. But I got over that... took me about three novels worth of self-searching, but I did manage it."

Shadow rolled his eyes, and replied,

"You spend a lot of your time getting over things that shouldn't upset you, and not enough dealing with real problems." Ame shrugged, and replied,

"That's just how I've always worked. It's not like you're that much better." Shadow replied, "And how is that?" Ame responded,

"You do have a tendency to... dwell on the past, and you don't think much about the future. The past is important; it creates who we are, but to ignore the future and treat the present as if it didn't matter much in comparison with the past is to deny yourself the ability to change things for the better. Chew on that for a minute before you give me your snippy response."

It was the first time she had criticized him, and he was surprised; not only by the fact that she had said those words to him, but at the words she said. She was right, of course, but...

"To ignore the past and block it from your memory is equally stupid," Shadow soon replied, "Because if you don't learn from your mistakes you are doomed to repeat them. If you try to block away who you were, then you have nothing to base who you are on, and then you are just a mask. Ame, you've been wearing a mask; I don't know for how long you have been doing so, but your real personality is being eroded by the face you wear to make it through the day. As much as you say you despise the others in this world, you are allowing yourself to become one of them by wearing the face that allows you safer passage through their world." Ame sighed, and replied,

"I know, Shadow, I know. But... what else can I do? Without the mask, they'll see what I truly am; and just because of what I am, they will want to destroy me. For now, at least, they think I'm mostly harmless-- just a slightly off, fairly powerful, know-it-all schoolgirl. And that's how I want it to stay for the unforeseeable future." Shadow asked her,

"But who are you really?" Ame shook her head. She wasn't answering that until she absolutely had to. Not to Shadow, not to anyone.

They eventually reached the school gates; instead of being stared at with hostile looks, they were completely ignored by the kids in the halls.

"Finally," Ame said, "It's gone back to normal. Didn't think it would happen this quickly, but it did." Shadow replied,

"Weren't you just saying something about being lulled into a false sense of security? I'm not taking any chances. I'm going to be on my guard." Ame sighed, and nodded. She would be, as well- shields up, magic ready to go.

It was second period, X-realm government class. The topic of discussion was... "Uprisings against the council of nine," The Bitch said as she glared at the two outlanders, who seemed to be her new favorite focal point,

"Which are ALWAYS unsuccessful."

"But-" interrupted someone in the classroom, "the avatar-" The Bitch slammed her hand on the table, and proclaimed,

"The avatar does not exist. She is a myth, created to give hope to the foolish ones that hope for the downfall of the X-realm government."

"Come on," someone else said, "Even headmistress Yikomu believes in the avatar. Are you telling us that your boss is wrong?" Shadow smirked. It seemed like Ame's job was being done for her.

The Bitch replied,

"Yikomu, while being a good headmistress, is... old fashioned, and doesn't see the world as it truly is sometimes. She is good for running this academy because she is slow to change her views, but... you shouldn't believe all the things she says about the past." Someone else asked,

"But how do you know this? Who gave you the authority to tell us that someone like her is wrong, when she's older and higher-ranking than any of us, including you?" The Bitch sent a spell at the speaker of the last question, and the kid was knocked out of his desk.

"The council of nine invests its authority in me, so that I can teach you what is true and what is just hearsay and lies. The avatar DOES NOT exist."

She looked at Ame, expecting a protest, but Ame wasn't looking at her.

"Ame Kage, are you paying attention? This is a very important lecture!" She threw a spell similar to the one she had thrown at the other kid before. Ame looked up, raised her hand, and caught the energy of the spell.

"Yes, I am paying attention; it's just difficult to look at your face when you are being an asshole." There were giggles in the classroom; it was relieving to see Ame make her usual comeback when they thought she had gone silent in submission. The Bitch paused for a moment, unsure of what to do. She then asked, false sugar in her voice,

"So, Ame, what do you think? Do you think the avatar exists?"

Ame sighed. She was not in the mood for this kind of conflict; nothing she could say would make the situation any easier for her. So, she kept her mouth shut, and looked at The Bitch with a defiant expression on her face. The Bitch got up, and walked towards Ame, and put a large hand in the vampire's face. A glow on energy surrounded her hand, and she said,

"Answer the question, or pay the consequences, outlander. You have no rights; I am the dictator." Ame stared at the glow of energy in front of her face for a moment, and quickly glanced at Shadow. Ame then brought her hand up to meet The Bitch's hand, power glowing in the small, slender digits. Ame said, slowly,

"Yes, I do believe the avatar exists. I believe she exists to counteract the presence of people like you: the pompous, ignorant, ass-kissing ladder-climbers who will oppress and torture anyone to stay in the favor of the ones they serve. If I were the avatar, I would most likely blow you apart for the way you have treated me in the time you have been in my class." Ame lowered her hand, and said, "However, I am NOT the avatar, I'm just a slightly 0ver-powered outlander, so all I can do is raise my shields up so that you have no chance of hurting me." For a moment, it looked as if The Bitch were going to send the energy in her hand at the girl, but then she dropped her own hand, smiled with the poisonous nectar of a fake smile, and replied,

"Well, that was an interesting, if naive answer. Well, let's get back to our lecture..."


	15. Some Shields and Some Weaknesses

Chapter Fifteen: Some Shields and Some Weaknesses

The bell finally rang, and the students were allowed to leave The Bitch's class. Shadow and Ame walked to their third class silently, both calming their auras before they had to enter the shielding class. Apparently, they hadn't done this well enough, because when they entered the room, the childlike teacher exclaimed,

"Haven't I told you to calm your auras before you get in here? Especially you, Ame, you should know better by now! I don't want any excuses; just don't come in here with your anger on your auras again!" Shadow replied,

"Would you rather we stay out? We can either behave in government or have our auras calm when we get here, which would you prefer?"

Another student, the one that had been knocked out of his desk in the previous class and had this class with Ame and Shadow as well, said,

"She's been going on about how the avatar doesn't exist! She knocked me out of my desk for asking what authority she had- which is understandable, I guess, but what she did to Ame was wrong!" The teacher turned to Ame, and asked,

"Is this true? What has been going on in there?"

Ame shook her head, and replied,

"Gaki-kin, now isn't the time. She'll get her due; but for now we'll have to put up with it to make our lives bearable. The Bitch is right about one thing, in her own way- no rebellion against the Council of Nine will work without the avatar." The teacher raised an eyebrow at the use of her first name, but nodded, and replied,

"I figured you'd say as much, Ame. I just... I just had hope that, one day soon, the avatar would rise up and clean up the mess the government has made of this place... the X-realm is getting weaker by the moment, with every rule that's made. I know you can feel it, as powerful as you are-- why don't you go find the avatar and ask her to help?"

Ame sighed, and shook her head.

"Even if that were my role, now is not the time. Please, just let us have class; I still need to teach Shadow some things before he'll be caught up." The teacher, Gaki as Ame had called her, replied,

"You mean, caught up with your standards. He proved yesterday and the day before that he's above everyone's level but yours." Ame smiled, and replied,

"That is true... but the more power you have, the more you need to shield it against those that would steal or abuse it. The more powerful someone is, the more that people want to make the person miserable." Gaki sighed, and replied,

"I guess you'd know, wouldn't you? Ame, why are you even here?" Ame shook her head, and pointed at the class. Gaki facepalmed, and said to the class,

"Sorry, I got carried away! Ok, so, today we're..."

Since Shadow _had_ mastered what was being taught (due mostly to Ame's ruthless drilling), Ame was able to drill him some more.

"So, we've covered shields against every basic magical attack there is, we've covered shields against physical weapons (daggers, swords, etc), we've covered shields that absorb, block, reflect, and redirect energy attacks, we've covered the relationships between the various colors when attacking and shielding, and basically everything else you need to be one of the best at shielding. You, because of the way Gerald created you, don't need to worry about shields against various types of poisons, bacteria, viruses, etc that prey on the living cells of an organism, which would have been my first step into advanced shielding."

Shadow asked,

"Why would that be the next step?" Ame replied,

"A weakness that thankfully wasn't covered in our first period class the other day is that Zs don't have immune systems. At all. I've had to create an immune system completely out of shields; if I didn't have it I'd die from the first virus I caught- and let me tell you, Matt has made a lot of viruses that prey upon vampires." Shadow asked,

"Matt?" Ame sighed, and replied,

"Oh, yeah, we weren't supposed to go over him until 5th period, that's right. You'll find out about him in a couple of hours. Let's see..."

She looked through her own shields, sorting them out by type, and sighed.

"The ones I have left... they aren't very strong. I'd be ashamed to try and teach them to you, because I haven't exactly mastered them myself." Shadow replied,

"You have the willpower to do just about anything you want to do, why haven't you made the shields like you need them? You obviously find shields to be important enough to spend a lot of energy on." Ame sighed.

"I can't answer that question truthfully, ok?"

Shadow replied,

"It's not ok, but I realize that you like to keep your mysterious secrets to yourself, in hopes of protecting me from whatever consequences that may come from knowing them. You're too damn protective; I can take care of myself, and I can endure- much better than you can, as has been made apparent."

Whether her response was going to be one of anger or one of sadness, Shadow didn't know, but he was prepared to deal with both. Instead, there was no response at all. It was as if he hadn't said anything. Ame turned to the teacher and said,

"Gaki, I've taught Shadow all I can teach him. What are we going to do now?" The girl sighed, and replied,

"Normally, I'd say for you to help me with the others. But I could do with two fewer powerful auras in here from now on, so just go ahead and skip this class. I'll get in touch with you if I need you."

Ame picked up her books, and left; Shadow followed her to the library; a giant section of the school with a seemingly infinite number of books.

'There could be an infinite number of books,' Shadow thought to himself, 'knowing this place. She knows I'm following her; what's her game?' Ame finally found a book, and picked it off the shelf, and handed it to Shadow.

"We start here," she said, "with this. It's shields against a good number of the spells that people use to gain control of other people. There are a lot of shields to learn, but with them you'll be immune to most spells sent to capture your mind, body, or soul into enslavement. There are some that'll prevent you from getting into the situation you were in at lunch, with your magic bound so that you can't use it."

Shadow asked,

"If you know how to do this, then why don't you? You have the strength, will, and ability to do so-- if I do, then you also can." Ame shook her head, and replied,

"I'm not answering that, no matter how many times you ask me. So, start studying; tell me when you've learned a shield; I'll throw the corresponding spell at you... and we'll start from there." And thus the shield drilling continued.

Their other classes went about the same way; eventually teachers were willing to let Ame and Shadow skip their classes to do extra work, to get out of their way, and because they were outlanders and nobody really cared what happened to outlanders as long as they didn't cause trouble.

No matter what the reason, Shadow was glad for the break from all but their first two classes; he found that between the library in the school and the computer at home, Ame knew how to find out anything and everything about the X-realm that one could ask. He also noticed that Ame seemed calmer, more comfortable when she was alone with him and the books. He couldn't say which of the two calmed her more, but anything that made her a bit more stable had to be a good thing for both of them...

He had to learn to use his power so that he could... do what? What would he do once he mastered this power he had? If he did manage to find a way to return to the world where he was created, would he have a place there? He was created so that he would never die of natural causes... old age, disease... so everyone that he did manage to get along with would die. His "immortality" would be a curse.

Here, at least, death was anything but permanent. He had already heard various classmates talking about how many times they had died and come back- it seemed that the more times you had done so, the more status you had; this was nonsensical to him; having 'died' once and been brought back, he did not feel it as a pleasant experience worth going through again just for the popularity value of it. When he said something to Ame about it, she had just confirmed his feelings, saying,

"I don't know what their deal is; it used to be quite the opposite-- not getting killed was more noteworthy than getting killed a whole bunch of times. And that's the way it should be, anyway- death isn't exactly fun to witness, much less experience even once, even more less several times." Shadow replied,

"Knowing and saying this, would you still have killed yourself when you were eighteen years old?" Ame sighed, and responded,

"I've asked myself that several times since then, and have come up with different answers each time. I guess my answer to that is that it's stupid to try to change the past; you have to deal with the results as they are." Shadow rolled his eyes, and said,

"Another question well avoided; you're getting quite good at this." Ame sighed.

"I confuse myself, so don't expect me to make any sense to you." Shadow let it go, as he had so many times before. He would eventually get the truth out of her, but not before she was ready.

A month passed as such, and Shadow grew stronger and more efficient in the control of his power. It would probably never become as easy to him as the Chaos Control he was created to use, but it was soon becoming second nature to be able to do anything, at any time. Ame's drilling made sure of it. The two outlanders shared some memories; Shadow with memories of the time spent on the Space Colony Ark, and Ame with memories of her first life. There were some subjects, like Ame's second life or times on the Ark not spent with Maria that were not discussed, but there was a mutual respect of silence pact on the part of each friend. Because, at that point, they had come to consider each other as friends, although neither would say anything to confirm the point.


	16. Political Agenda and Large Mob

Chapter Sixteen: Political Agenda and Large Mob

Instead of going to their first period class, the students were told to go to the auditorium.

"Oh, fun, an assembly," Ame commented sarcastically, "What propaganda are they going to force on us this time?" Honestly, I thought things were stable enough that they didn't have to call these things!" Shadow asked,

"What are you talking about?" Ame replied, "They used to call assemblies that basically contained the content of The Bitch's government class lectures. It was to keep old-schoolers like me from being able to say anything sensible to the new kids- they are such sheep, they won't listen to us. As long as the Council of Nine sanctions it, they don't care. The Council gives them stability, they take whatever abuse they get." Shadow replied,

"Isn't that exactly what you are doing, staying at this school?" Ame laughed, and replied,

"Your ability to point out my hypocrisy never ceases to amaze me." Let's hurry up so we can get a seat in the back."

The student body, which consisted of around 600 people, was crammed into the stone auditorium.

"Why don't they upgrade this school?" the girl beside Ame asked, "I mean seriously, stone is SO old fashioned. Why not use one of the new magical fabrics that's come out? It wouldn't take that much energy, and it'd give the weakling outlanders a job to do." Ame looked at the girl beside her, and replied,

"Do you actually want an answer to that question?" The girl looked at Ame, and recognizing her, replied,

"Yeah, I guess you'd know, wouldn't you? My name is Rikachai, by the way."

Ame replied,

"Stone is easy to put shields on. Magically constructed walls can be bent or broken by a powerful enough spell-- as anyone who's lost control of their magic can attest to." Rikachai responded, "So, basically, the stone is there to keep the place from caving in the first time some idiot loses control of their magic, I see." Shadow snorted.

"Ame, you were just called an idiot, aren't you going to say something back?" Ame shook her head, and replied,

"You're the only one worth arguing with over something like that, Shadow."

After a few minutes, someone finally came to stand on the stage at the front of the auditorium. It was a very pretty young woman; her pale skin, black hair, and aura indicated that she was a vampire, and a powerful one at that. Ame drew in a breath. This wasn't the average bullshit ceremony, not if she was here.

"Yurei-san," Ame murmured quietly. The woman spoke, her voice magically amplified.

"I'm sure you all are happy to get out of your first period class, yes?" There were murmurs of assent. Everyone was waiting to hear what this woman had to say. The woman continued,

"I am Yurei; I am the first of the Council of Nine. I have come to issue a decree, the effects of which will take place in an hour. In a 5-4 vote, the Council of Nine has decided that all non-vampires living in the X-realm will be turned into humans. Once they leave, they will return to their original form. The reason for this is to help provide unity and clarity between the species. Also, the different types of vampires will be considered as one type, for the same reason. Any questions?" It took a moment for the different species to digest this information before someone asked,

"How are you going to pull this off? That's quite the spell, isn't it?" Yurei replied,

"That's not for you to know. You all have an hour to configure what your human forms will look like- if you know how to do so. I will leave you now." Yurei instant-teleported out of the auditorium just before the shock in the audience turned into anger. There were some screams from the more outspoken members of the various species against the council, calls for a riot, etc, which were soon answered by the less-outspoken followers. Ame looked at Shadow, and asked,

"Have you figured out how to instant transport yet? We need to get out of here... library... and quickly. This place is about to erupt." Shadow nodded, pulled the power necessary, and they were transported to the library. Even though the library was on the other side of the campus, the noise from the auditorium was clearly audible.

"It's an all out riot down there. I'm glad we're up here. I hope that shit doesn't come up here," Ame commented with fear in her voice. Shadow replied,

"There are places in the library that I doubt anyone besides us know about. Very few people come in this library in the first place, and fewer than that stay long enough to find anything. Ame, can they really pull that spell off? And turn everyone human?" Ame nodded, and replied,

"They can't turn the vampires human, but they can turn everyone else human. And that includes you. Shadow, are you going to be able to deal with that?" Shadow replied,

"Most likely not. I feel like I've been pulled around this dimension like a rag doll, and this is just one more thing to make the afterlife harder for me. How powerful can the council of nine be? How much power would it take to depose them?" Ame sighed. So, one of the moments she had been dreading came. Shadow was no longer in the stage of bewildered acceptance of his fate, but was willing to take charge of his future. He was not going to choose the path of stability; he was going to fight for change-- he was going to be free or die trying.

'But the rules are different in the X-realm,' she thought to herself, 'death isn't the worst consequence of your actions.' But, there and again, what was she doing here at this school but wasting away? Her power was not being used to its full potential; the knowledge she had was considered by the public at large to be falsehood, and she had to wear a mask to make it through every day. All the things she had suffered to gain all of these years were being wasted; this was as good a time as any to make a change. She finally said, after a couple of moments of these thoughts,

"Well, there's not much we can do within the next hour to prevent the spell from being cast; even if I were the avatar I doubt I could manage undoing a spell that powerful-- it was cast by at least 5 of the council of nine, possibly more; and whoever their supporters were. So I would suggest we start calibrating what your human form will look like." Shadow asked,

"What do you mean? Are you saying I have some control over the outcome of this spell?" Ame replied,

"Yeah, you can change your appearance and basic body type and stuff. Do you have anything you'd prefer, or are you just at the point where you don't care, you want this shit to stop." Shadow simply looked at her. The answer to THAT question was obvious. Ame sighed, and said,

"Well, if you don't care..." She got a gleam in her eyes, one that Shadow recognized as the one she got when she felt particularly creative.

"What are you going to do?" Shadow asked apprehensively, "Am I going to have to stop you?"

Ame took some paper and a pencil out of her bag, and shook her head, answering absentmindedly,

"No, it'll be ok, I just gotta... and fix that..."


	17. New Form and Spell Blocked

Chapter Seventeen: New Form and Spell Blocked

For the next half-hour, Ame drew while Shadow watched. The paper was becoming covered in eraser marks; Ame was taking this particular drawing very seriously. The various lines and circles eventually evolved into the form of a human male; the hair was slightly longer than average, and the eyes were too large in proportion to the size of the face. When Shadow commented on this, Ame replied,

"I know, I know, it's in anime style; I've been drawing like this since I was ten. But believe me; you would rather have me doing this than the set spell that's coming through in..." Ame checked her watch. "Oh, Shit! I've only got a few minutes! Damn!" Ame finished sketching the lines, inked them in quickly but carefully, and then got some markers out of her bag. She considered the colors as she laid them out in front of her, looking between them and Shadow, nodding. She finally chose a few, and put the rest of them in her bag, and began to color. The final product didn't look too bad to Shadow; he figured that there were worse things to look like than the human depicted on the piece of paper in front of Ame. Ame, however, was not pleased.

"Dammit, why couldn't I have made that arm... and that red is off... and..." Shadow laughed.

"Ame, quit being so perfectionist about it. It's fine. So how are you going to make sure this is my body and not whatever automated form is taken when the spell goes through?" Ame picked the picture off the table, looked at Shadow, and said,

"Well, here it is, I guess. I feel like I'm missing something... something important." Shadow replied,

"You do realize that there's a good likelihood that most of the advantages that Dr. Gerald created me with will disappear when I take on a human form, right? You wouldn't happen to know any sort of means to keep these advantages, do you?" Ame looked up, startled.

"Oh. Duh. That's what I was missing. Yeah, I can do that... it'll take..." Ame stuck her tongue out to the side as she often did when she was trying to think of the solution to a problem. She finally nodded, and said,

"Yeah, I can do it. It'll take an older-school kind of spell than I was wanting to use..."

"What's wrong with using an old-school spell?" Shadow asked. Ame replied,

"I dislike attracting certain kinds of attention to myself. Casting spells that have mostly fallen out of use attracts that kind of attention. But I guess the Council of Nine is fairly occupied with this spell they're working on, so it won't matter as much." Shadow asked,

"Momentarily ignoring your statements of paranoia, what exactly are you planning on doing?"

Ame sighed, and judged her words for a minute, before finally saying,

"You're probably not going to like what I'm thinking of, simply because it'll be damn hard to turn you back into a hedgehog once the Council's spell wears off. But it'll make your human form feel much more like it's your natural form-- you won't have to go through learning how to coordinate your movements or aura to a different body size, for example. You'll keep most- if not all- the advantages you were created with, including your inability to get sick with anything-- something I wouldn't mind having, mind you." Shadow nodded. Considering that he was going to end up having to be human for an undefined amount of time – which irked him to no end – he'd rather Ame, who he knew was meticulous in her spellcasting, rather than some unknown governmental body with their own political agenda. He said,

"Do whatever it is you're going to do. Just do it before they do whatever it is they're going to do. This place has screwed me over enough times without my knowing for me to let it do it again when I have a possible defense against it." Ame nodded, and got a small music player out of her bag. She turned it on, and put it to a song.

The energy around her began to swirl; and at first it looked like the emotional swirling that Shadow had come to associate with the emotional outbursts of magic he had become accustomed to, but then he realized that the strings of magic moved less like a maelstrom and more like a flowing of water. The magic moved in patterns, accented by the musical phrases that Ame sang almost too softly to be heard. There was a smile on her face... it was different from any that she had sported in the month that Shadow had known her. It took him a minute to realize why it was that it seemed different... it was because there was not pain in her eyes in this moment while she was spellcasting.

In a moment, however, there was no room in his mind for mood contemplation; for the spell had started to work. Shadow felt his body change; he closed his eyes and nearly screamed from the pain. He was physically being stretched in all directions, and the pain was agonizing. He started to fight the force that was bringing about this pain with his aura, only to have his magic be blocked by another force. Remembering the flash training, he tried to shield against this second force, only to have a third force drain all the energy from his shield. 'The hell?' His nerves screamed at him to find another way to break the pain, but with every attempt to throw off the spell he was blocked.

And, finally, when he was about to give up, the pain stopped. He realized that his eyes were closed, so he opened them. His eyesight hadn't changed; it hadn't gotten any worse (which he had feared); but everything did look... smaller, and shorter. He noticed Ame, who was putting her music player and notebook up. He said, with a voice that was somehow (magically?) still his own,

"Ame, you're short." Ame looked – up – at him, and giggled. "Shadow, you're tall, heh. You're like, twice your original height. You put up quite the fight against my spell, Shadow; you obviously learned all the stuff that I'm teaching you." Shadow frowned, and replied,

"But it wasn't enough to stop your spell. I was panicked enough to put a good deal more power into my defenses than I would have normally, and I still couldn't break it. Ame, what's wrong with me?" Ame walked towards Shadow, and stood three feet away from him.

'I still can't get used to how tall he is,' she thought to herself as she looked the now-human Shadow over, 'or how...' Ame blushed slightly, and said,

"Shadow, I've been teaching you how to block about 95% of the things you are likely to run into. Just because you couldn't shield against the spell I sent at you, it doesn't mean there's something wrong with you."

"But..." Shadow replied, a distressed look on his face, his breathing quick. Ame then figured out what was going on.

"Shadow, you're starting to have a panic attack. This is going to sound really stupid, but take a couple of deep breaths, and calm the fuck down."

Shadow took a couple of deep breaths, and wrested control away from the fear that had come from nowhere to try to consume him. That... unreasoning fear... It was sparked by the pain, but what made it grow so quickly and so dangerously? He didn't know; nor did he know how Ame recognized it so quickly. He asked,

"Ame, how did you know exactly what was happening?" Ame replied,

"I've had panic attacks before, and with the way you were trying to block my spell I figured you were starting to go into one. That Council-created spell is going to take effect in about a minute, and everyone it affects is going to feel a similar pain to the one that sparked your own reaction – although your pain was significantly worse because your body shape was changing so drastically. Speaking of which, do you want a mirror?" Shadow nodded, and replied,

"It would be nice to see what exactly I went through the pain to become." Ame led him through a few doors of the seemingly endless library to a room that was made entirely of mirrors- walls, ceiling, floor. Ame looked at the mirrors, and said,

"This room was created by Vira, a very vain little Sarakunoshe child, somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 million years ago. She was always changing her appearance, and wanted a quiet place to ogle over her image for hours. Thus, this room was created."

"Sarakunoshe child?" Shadow asked as he stared at the reflection in the mirror. It was him, he could tell; the same facial expressions, the same posture, even the same shoes (which, if he had remembered correctly, took Ame a full five minutes of drawing and erasing before she was satisfied with them). His hair was a mixture of black and red; his skin was tanned; darker than most of the humans that were in the Academy and much darker than Ame's white skin. His eyes had stayed the same crimson color they had always been; although they were smaller in proportion to the human face.

"Yeah; the Sarakunoshes are this giant family that was started when Amity and Hourous got stuck in a time loop for a long time and had 300 kids. This school was created to educate the multitudes of children; and eventually most of them had kids... Most X-realmers that were actually born of a womb are descended from one of the Sarakunoshes... Which, as you can imagine, leads to some insane inbreeding." Shadow, moving towards the door of the mirrored room, replied,

"I feel sympathy for whoever had to name those 300 children; and for the mother who was pregnant all of those times." Ame followed Shadow out the door, and said,

"The avatar ended up naming them all; there were some that were born in sets of 20, and it got to the point where _she_ was like, 'Ok, all the people born in this set are going to have a name that starts with ka', and it just went downhill from there." Shadow asked,

"And why did the avatar get stuck with the job of naming all of these children? Why didn't their parents name them?" Ame shrugged, and responded,

"Maybe _she_ didn't have anything else better to do? Maybe she owed Amity and Hourous a debt? I dunno."

It was then, apparently, that the spell took effect, because a large, collective scream came from the direction of the auditorium; the effects of the reactions the magic around the screamers could be felt through the strings all the way to the place in the library where Ame and Shadow stood. Ame said,

"Damn, they're in more pain than I thought they would be... in fact, they're in worse pain than you were in. Shadow, there's more to this spell than just changing their physical forms... can you help me figure out what it is?"

The two mages focused their magical sight on the auditorium, sifting through the reactions of the various lines. Ame was faster than Shadow, since this kind of analysis came to her through second-nature, but they both came to the same conclusion. Shadow said after a few minutes,

"These people are twisted. Ame, is that new 'need' line what I think it is? It looks like the vampire hunger indicator, but... like it's been reversed..." Ame nodded grimly, and replied,

"Yes... basically... all of these now-humans have a need to let the vampires feed off of them... and, under that need, an exaggerated sex drive. They haven't noticed the second thing, though, but they will in..."

Shadow didn't even hear the last half of her sentence; he was too busy fighting off the pieces of the Council's spell that had decided to come after him, almost as if he were an afterthought.

"Ame, help," he gasped as he threw his shields against the overpowering force of the magic that was trying to twist him; he couldn't knock away the searching threads of the spell quickly enough; they were going to connect with his aura, and – and suddenly, they were being blasted away; the spell-threads that escaped the initial blast started to scuttle away like roaches from light, but they were found and blasted as well. There was one that almost made it to Shadow, but he blew the life from it with an overkill-worthy use of power. A moment later, the air of them was clear of all enemy magical lines, and the patchwork in the air around them had returned to normal. Ame smirked, and said,

"I figured they'd pull that, the bitches. I may not be able to keep the spell off of all these people but I can at least keep it off of one person!" Shadow smiled, and said,

"I suspect that we could easily sneak home without being caught. As much as I enjoy being in the library, the thought of being in hiding doesn't appeal much to me." Ame laughed, and replied,

"You're too easily recognized, even in your human form; you've always got a frown on your face or that sarcastic smirk when you're amused." Shadow replied,

"You don't have that much variation to your expression, either. Not with the mask you keep on constantly, anyway." Ame shook her head, and replied,

"Ok, you're not getting me to talk about that now, either. So let's just go home."


	18. Lust Spell and Dooming Plan

Chapter Eighteen: Lust Spell and Dooming Plan

By the time they got to their first class the next morning, Ame was visibly shaken.

"This is worse than I thought it was going to be," she said quietly as she took her seat, "All the blood lust and sex lust all over the place, and nothing to keep it from being acted upon... "

"You mean better," said a cheerful voice from beside her, in a desk that had, until that day, been empty. Shadow and Ame looked over, and identical looks of surprise crossed the two friends' faces.

"You look so surprised to see me, Ame-chan!" the occupant said, leaning back in her seat. It was the council member that had given the announcement in the assembly the day before.

"Yurei-san," Ame said, the surprise in her face changing into a dull hostility, "it's strange to see you here." The Council-member laughed, her long black hair shaking slightly with the movement, her black eyes full of mirth. She replied,

"It's been such a long time since we've talked, Ame-chan, and all you can say is my name? There are so many things to catch up on since the times we've spent together!" Ame replied,

"Yes... those moments that could have been otherwise wasted, how could I forget?"

Shadow didn't miss the Japanese honorifics; after all, that had been his first language. The relationship between the two had, at one point or another, been one of inferior (Ame) to superior (Yurei). Yurei turned to Shadow, and said,

"So, you're the infamous Shadow the Hedgehog. Your showing up in this dimension's caused some of us on the council quite a bit of trouble." Shadow took the bait, and asked,

"How so?" Yurei replied,

"Your presence here seems to suggest that the avatar is supposed to return soon; _she_ never acts at all unless she's planning a return to power. It's the job of us, the Council of Nine, to prevent the despot from returning to power, see." Shadow raised an eyebrow involuntarily. Yurei added,

"Most people don't remember her as being a despot. But if you look carefully into the histories, there's a pretty steady record of atrocities being done by the avatar after _she_ comes into power. Usually many people die, some souls get destroyed, some innocents get their memories trashed by _her _memories, etc. It's not a pretty picture, let me tell you. Ame, of course, would say differently, wouldn't you, Ame?"

Ame sighed. She was not in the mood for this kind of discussion, after what she had seen this morning. Still, she did have one suitable argument that would hopefully keep Yurei from pursuing the subject for too much longer.

"Well, when you say look into the histories... are you saying the histories written by the Council, the histories written by the Sarakunoshe family, the ones written by outlanders, or some of the other different kinds that exist? Each one looks at X-realm history from a different bias, so you really have to take all of them and piece together which ones seem to be most congruent, instead of just looking at one." Yurei looked nonplussed; it was obvious that she had been planning on lowering Ame's credentials with a certain someone, and it had backfired. Ame mentally sighed in relief; it had worked- for now. Shadow, who had watched this exchange in silence, thought,

'Now I see why Ame would never tell me things for herself, and always made me go look them up, and would never tell me which source was more valid. I wonder what this Yurei's getting at, though? It's as if Yurei was trying to discredit Ame's opinion.' Shadow suddenly came to a realization.

'She _is_ trying to discredit Ame, but even more so to make me doubt Ame. She has to know that Ame and I are fairly close; it wouldn't take more than a basic glance at our auras to figure that out. She knows that I was not affected by the spell that the Council effected yesterday, and probably realizes that Ame is responsible for that. She wants to split us apart – divide and conquer.' Shadow's mind went down that road of thought, and realized that the more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed.

But did Ame know this? What if she didn't? Ame obviously had some emotions connected with her past and this Yurei girl, and, knowing Ame, was likely letting these emotions affect how she interacted with the Councilwoman. But there was no way to say anything to her, not with Yurei sitting right there next to them, watching their every move, possibly monitoring the magic around them. Shadow sighed. Perhaps Ame's paranoia had rubbed off on him. Still, in a place like this, it was better to be overly-paranoid than to be naïve.

As the class went on, Ame thought to herself,

'Well, at least my aura isn't reacting to hers. It's been, what, since I last went to this school since I broke up with her and only now my magic isn't reacting to hers. I need to tell Shadow how I know her at some point, but how am I going to do that?'

The opportunity presented itself in the Bitch's class. The Bitch nearly fell over when she saw Yurei enter the room; it was obvious that she was going to do some serious ass kissing from the look of pure adoration on the woman's face. Yurei smiled sweetly at The Bitch, and said,

"I've just come to pick up some idea of how things are being taught in this academy these days, since it's been a while since I've been to this school." Ame replied,

"Yeah, I wonder if you've picked up any girlfriends since I broke up with you three weeks before graduation, or if you've only managed to go out with cronies since you took up your seat of power?" There were giggles in the classroom, and snickers, all covered up by looks of shock. Ame, the class know-it-all, had gone out with Yurei, the head of the Council of Nine, when they were in school? It seemed surreal. Shadow, after getting over his initial disbelief that two so obviously opposed people could have been girlfriends, realized that Ame's statement had been more for him than for anyone else. It was almost as if Ame were saying, 'I know who I'm dealing with, and I'm being careful, but keep a lookout for me, because I might screw up for emotional reasons,' or some other warning of the like.

The Bitch was infuriated, and was about to say something, when Yurei replied,

"Ah, yes, those were the days, were they not? But I believe we know whose ideologies were misdirected now, don't we Ame?" Ame replied

"What goes up must certainly come down and I'm counting down the time. Yurei-san, our little war hasn't been finished, and neither has the larger war between the factions of the X-realm." Yurei looked at Ame a bit sadly, and replied with a question,

"When have the two wars really been separate things?" Ame answered,

"They never were the same thing, Yurei-san. There's always been Matt... It used to just be three forces, fighting for X-realm control. Then two of them united and the third split apart, and now we have us. When is it going to end?" Ame looked at her desk, unwilling to say any more, and Yurei picked up on this hint, and said nothing else. The Bitch blathered on...

Yurei decided to tag along with Ame and Shadow as the two went to go and miss the rest of their classes. Ame, who had fallen into a depression, said nothing about it, but Shadow said, irked,

"Can you leave us alone? Ame obviously doesn't want you around, and I'm not inclined to hang around someone that I don't like. So go. Now." Yurei laughed, and replied,

"Do you really think you can get rid of me that easily? You two have had your own little nook in this school for a month, most likely cooking up all sorts of plans for rebellion against this realm like the outlanders that you are. Well, here I am to stir things up. The council wants you two out of the way, and the best way to do that is to keep you two occupied." Shadow replied,

"And you're telling me this, why?" Yurei smiled smugly, and replied,

"Because once I get through casting this particular spell, you won't be able to think very well at all." Yurei pointed her finger at Shadow, and before he could react, the magic attached itself to his aura and infiltrated into his system.

Ame saw the spell, and nearly cried out when she realized what it was. It was, basically, a love-spell... more accurately, a lust spell. Trained on Shadow. Towards...... Ame sighed. Of course. Towards Yurei. The signs of the spell working were already in Shadow's eyes, in his aura, in his body movements. Ame had been hoping that, now that Shadow was a human, there might be a chance for her, but... Ame sighed inwardly, ignoring Yurei's flirtatious comments, and the way that Shadow, who had been cold and nearly hostile to the black-haired vampire before, was now receiving them warmly.

Something in the back of his mind kept on screaming at the wrongness of what was happening, but the combination of the new sensation of lust and the lust itself were more than strong enough to push that voice of reason out of Shadow's mind. He started to flirt back a little, the magic egging him on, and by the time they had gotten to the library he had all but forgotten Ame.

Yurei's grins were real, and not just for the show of keeping Shadow entranced on her. The Council of Nine had considered destroying him on the spot when the avatar had brought him to the X-realm, but Yurei had recognized him as being special to the avatar, and convinced the rest of the council to let him stay. For some revenge, she had said with a conspiratorial grin, and they all went with her, being bored as they were.

Ame, as Yurei knew intimately, was extremely unstable; even though Ame had not opened up when they had been girlfriends, Yurei was still close enough to figure out the basic inner workings of the outlander girl. Shadow had been an obsession of Ame's for a very long time – possibly since before the time Ame had been reborn as an X-realmer. Yurei believed that Ame, despite herself and her powerful will, would open up to Shadow. And she had been right. Within hours, Yurei would have Shadow wrapped around her little finger, and Ame would be left very much alone, her one hope for companionship stolen away by her ex. How ironic.

With anyone else, Yurei would not have been able to execute this kind of plan; anyone but Ame would take revenge. But Ame, as unstable as she was, would break down, and become lost in the depression that she had been holding away from herself for billions of years. Yurei couldn't wait to see the one person that had rejected her become a mindless husk.


	19. Spell Broken and Fools Realize

Chapter Nineteen: Spell Broken and Fools Realize

Ame sat in her empty house, alone. It had been like this for two weeks, ever since that damned-to-nine-hells Yurei had cast that spell on Shadow. It was amazing how quickly a bespelled male could forget everyone but the girl he had been spelled to fall in lust with. All in the name of revenge, most likely, Ame figured, since Yurei knew that Shadow would be just the kind of person Ame would open up to. Perhaps Yurei went as far to believe that without her friend, Ame would fall apart? Perhaps a billion years ago, when they had gone out, Ame would have fallen apart over something like this. But Ame, despite herself, had bonded with Shadow, and that bond had changed her. She had become quite used to interacting with him on a completely platonic basis, and although he hadn't gone out of his way to talk to her, he hadn't ignored her completely, either.

Eventually that spell was going to go. Since Yurei wasn't likely to remove it, it was up to Shadow to gather his wits and break it himself. Ame sighed. Actually hoping a man would be able to think past his hormones long enough to break a lust-spell was almost laughable, and yet it was her only hope. Well, she wasn't going to be stupid enough to try and get this to happen; she knew better-- it would happen, but she would have to be patient.

Yurei was enjoying her newest boy-toy. Socially inept as he tended to be, once he got the basics, he was quite good in bed. Quite good. Sex in the X-realm was two-thirds magic, and Yurei had to give it to Ame for teaching the outlander control of his aura. His powerful aura. No wonder the avatar had brought him here; perhaps _she_ had thought he could be an ally of hers? It didn't matter now, because the boy was hers, now. It had been a month now since she had usurped Ame's place in the center of his heart; Yurei wondered how Ame was taking it, but wasn't that curious anymore, not with her new little amusing plaything.

Two months alone had finally started to take their toll on Ame. Only her school work and the hours spent in the library -alone- brought her any solace. Ame began to refine her shields, her spells, all the things that she had been unwilling to teach Shadow because of her lack of confidence in them. She had started to take blood from people, instead of supplying her own life energy with her magical energy. There were plenty of willing humans, thanks to that damned spell of the Council's, and she certainly didn't feel like going about living the hard way at this point.

After three months, Ame had resumed a habit that had ended with the end of her first life: she had begun cutting. Across her skin the blade crept, the dark purple blood dripping from small cuts. She cut the same places, day by day, to the point where the scars looked like tattoos. She sang softly to herself as she did this, in a dialect of Arkanto that was so old none of the words would have made sense to someone that could only speak the current dialect. She would cry; only the small sparks of pain broke her control enough to where she could cry. And once she cried, she could sleep, and make it to the next day, where she would put on her mask, and start the day over again.

AN: Goddammit, when will this fucking end?!!?

After four months, Yurei got tired of Shadow, and tired of waiting for her revenge on Ame. Ame shouldn't have lasted for this long, unless she had changed immensely in the time since the two had parted ways and had become enemies. And besides, there was an impending threat of the X-realm's perennial enemy, the A-realm, having new and improved invasion plans... and the X-realm, which had been weakening steadily for the past billion years or so, wasn't certain to beat its enemy. So Yurei began to pay less attention to maintaining the hold she had on Shadow, and shifted her energies elsewhere; she even left the Academy to attend to her duties on the council...

Slowly, the spell wore off. More and more often, Shadow had moments where he realized that something was wrong with him. Finally, two weeks after Yurei had left the school - and him- there was only one piece of the spell still left to be wrested off of him. He knew it was there, the rest of his mind and body emaciated from the rest of the spell, and what it was: every time he had a reaction of lust to anything, it automatically shifted to Yurei. He was tired of this; and he got angrier every time it happened because he realized that for nearly six months his emotions had been controlled by someone else.

He wanted to go to Ame and ask her how to get rid of the remains of the spell, but ever since that day... Ame had just acted like there was nothing special between them. No friendship, no past, no attraction on her part. She had simply treated him like another classmate. Her walls had gone up, and that was that; even after Yurei had left she had made no move to resume their friendship. So one afternoon, about six months after Yurei's appearance he decided he would force the issue on her by going to her house and making her discuss it.

It was about four hours after she had left the school to go home; it was dark. Shadow had spent these four hours in the library, looking for a way to get rid of the spell on his own. However, there simply weren't any entries for someone trying to get rid of a lust spell on his/herself. At the end of the fourth hour, he had realized that nobody who was under such a spell was likely to want to get rid of it, or even know it existed. Wonderful, just another way that being unique was going to make things more difficult for him. So he had left, and gone out into the night, walking in the direction of Ame's house.

Halfway there, Shadow sensed that there was something wrong. He put his shields up, and walked forwards, cautiously. He went the distance to her house, the sense of wrongness in the air getting thicker, and finally entered her house. The patchwork of magic in the air had recently been disturbed by strong emotions; it didn't feel stable to begin with, which meant that it had been disturbed numerous times over a long period of time. Shadow frowned with worry, and went to her bedroom, where he sensed her aura.

She was naked, on her bed; there were bloodstains all over her blankets, and a new, still wet pool of blood by her stomach, where she had obviously cut herself earlier. She was asleep- for a heartbeat Shadow thought it was more than sleep- and had dried tears on her eyes. Shadow looked at her body; she had always worn long sleeves and long pants, so covering up what he saw now would have been easy. Her body was covered in scars that were traced out in strange little patterns; these scars were both months old and fresh at the same time; she had apparently been cutting over them as they started to heal up.

Shadow slumped, nearly losing his balance, as he realized what had happened-- and why it had happened. "Ame," he murmured aloud, "what have I done to you?" Six months ago, he had wanted her to open up and let her emotions break through, rather than hiding everything behind a mask. Now he saw why she had been so unwilling. How had she managed to keep this a secret from him? Oh. It wouldn't have been difficult, with the way he had been infatuated with Yurei.

'Wonderful way to repay her kindness towards you,' a cynical voice said in the back of his mind,'leaving her to self-destruct like this. You can only take that bespelled thing so far; even as infatuated as you were you could have known that she was going to do this.' And yet he hadn't. He hadn't bothered to look outside of himself and the new, intoxicating feeling of lust to see what was happening around him. There was no getting around it.

Shadow sighed slightly. As much as the guilt threatened to consume him at the moment, he didn't have the right to let it. No. He had created this mess; he had pulled the stone out that collapsed the walls within this girl; he now had to do something about it. But what? What may have worked six months ago most likely would backfire now-- he couldn't just place a hand on her shoulder, wake her up, and apologize to her. He wasn't sure what the worst reaction to that could be, but he didn't want to find out by trying. For ten minutes he stood five feet from her bed, debating with himself over what course of action to take.

Ame woke, dried tears in her eyes and dried blood on her stomach, to a painful sight. Shadow.

'He finally came around,' she thought sadly, 'but too little too late. He's come out of his little trip into the land of lust just in time to watch me fall apart. If I wanted vengeance upon him, that'd give me a bit of comfort. But now...' Ame sat up in her bed, and said,

"Shadow... you've finally remembered me, have you? Did she leave you for something or someone more interesting?" Shadow bristled at the second statement, and replied,

"Yes, she did. Ame... you intend upon destroying yourself no matter what I do, don't you?"

Ame nodded, and answered,

"I don't plan upon it, but yes, it's too late for you to do anything. Yurei was victorious. So were you, actually. You wanted to see my mask come off. Well, it has. Do you like what's underneath? Or did you like the fake side of me better? Did you think you were going to come here and redeem yourself, to start things up where you had left them off? I can tell by the look on your face that's exactly what you intended to do. It's too late for that, Shadow."

Shadow took a step towards her, only to be physically hurled back to the wall by her shields.

"You've already lost one love," Ame said, "One that was closer to you than I am. You were able to endure her death, and you'll be able to endure mine." Shadow asked,

"Death? Is it not nearly impossible for you to stay dead?" Ame replied, her voice ice,

"I'm not talking about death of the body. Death of my mind, or death of my soul, either one is good enough for me; they're both unavoidable and they'll both end this pain."

She looked at Shadow, and he looked back at her. Suddenly, there was a flare of magic from without them, and Shadow felt himself drop into a memory... one that wasn't his...

_"Ame, what are we going to name them?" the woman asked, pointing at the newborn babies. Ame had counted twenty of them; 'Great,' she thought to herself, 'more to add to the brood. Looks like I'll be naming this bunch, too. Guess I'll use 'ka' for these names... Kari, Kato, Kamia...' The mother had looked at Ame, and said, _

_"Thanks, Ame. I figured it wasn't often that the avatar got called to do something so silly, so I figured I'd give you a laugh." Ame had laughed, and replied, _

_"Amity, if I get too many more laughs like this I'm going to lose my reputation for being the doom sayer of the Council of Nine." Amity grinned, and replied, _

_"It's your own fault for actively bashing their heads in. Why not just combat them subtly like Janet... or Yurei, as she's decided to start calling herself, or corrupt them from within, like Matt?" Ame shook her head, and replied, _

_"It's not my style to go down quietly and just let the things I care about go. As much as this place is the seventh level of hell, the X-realm is __home__, which is something I never had. I've never had anyone to love, so I may as well take care of this realm like it's my lover until one -possibly- comes along." Amity frowned, and replied,_

_"After 2 billion years, you're still the same girl that committed suicide, aren't you?" Ame nodded..._

Hm. Whoever gave Shadow that memory had given him two very important things. One was a piece of information about Ame that he had suspected for a long time and had not been able to confirm. Six months ago, this would have taken preference. But the second important thing was useful now, and he was about to use it. He said,

"Ame, in you own words, it's not your style to go down quietly and just let the things you care about go. So why are you doing it? Are you seriously letting some guy get in the way of proving who you are?" Ame looked at him, a questioning look on her face. Shadow was encouraged by this; if she was listening, then there might be a chance.

"You told me too much of your knowledge about the avatar... it's you, I know without a doubt that it's you. You have a responsibility to this dimension, and you're letting yourself lose in the war with the Council of Nine. The A-realm is coming to attack the X-realm; that's why she left, because she knows that this dimension's too weak to take them on with the way it is. I've read enough on your computer to know that you hate the A-realm even more than you hate the Council; are you just going to let them take this world over?" Ame sighed.

"And what about when I take care of that shit? The Council of Nine will eventually come back into power as it always has after I've deposed of them, in the form of nine fresh new faces, and start the dimension back into its spiral downwards into weakness. It's always worked that way. Matt puts the Council of Nine together, and Janet- now known as Yurei- makes sure that it takes me forever to pull the Council apart. We are the Three, and it's the way it's always been, and the way it'll always be."

Shadow shook his head. He wasn't through yet.

"Ame, if you really believed that things wouldn't change, and if you were really that hopeless, why did you answer Maria's call? Why did you bring me here?" Shadow almost smiled at the spark of life that brought into Ame's eyes. Ame was about to really start arguing with him; which meant that her spirit hadn't quite died yet. Ame said,

"Because Maria sent out the call, and because it was you. Maria is important to you, so I'd have answered the call even if it hadn't been for you. But it was for you, so I did whatever I could -as weak as I have been- to try to make sure I answered that call, and managed to bring you here. I was surprised when the Council of Nine didn't automatically kill you once you came, but now I understand- Yurei knew that you were special to me, and decided to use you against me, which would, of course..."

Ame facepalmed.

"Make exactly what's happened happen. Of course. Damn her to nine hells, I actually fell for it."

Shadow sighed. He had done the exact same thing.

'Now to clean up the mess,' he thought to himself.


	20. Big Debt and First Kiss

Chapter Twenty: Big Debt and First Kiss

Ame sighed. Five minutes ago, she had been ready to quit, and now she was starting to feel the breath of life in her soul again, for the first time in months. Shadow said,

"Now that you seem to have stopped being fatalistic for the time being, I would like to apologize for being so stupid. Because I was, indeed, very foolish." Ame smiled slightly, and replied,

"And I am sorry that I am stupid enough to break down as far as I have. No, Shadow, I haven't put up the mask again. It's just that there's nothing like making me laugh at myself to get me out of a depression, at least temporarily. So, I assume you want your room back?"

Shadow stared at Ame. It certainly seemed that her mask had come back on, from her words... but, looking into her eyes, he realized that the pain was still in her face, very much so. She was trying to push it away, he realized, long enough so that he could leave before she let herself feel it again. As much as he felt he deserved to see what he had wrought, she believed he didn't deserve to feel any more guilt than he already did. Shadow tentatively took a step towards her, and, not being blocked by her shields, took three more, until he was standing in front of her. After a quick, affirmative nod of her head, he sat on the bed beside her, and simply looked into her eyes, judging her reaction.

"Shadow," Ame said his name softly, conveying a warmth in the two syllables that he wouldn't have guessed she could have felt. He tentatively placed his hand on hers, and when he wasn't resisted, held it gently. She laid her head on his shoulder, seemingly uncaring of the nakedness of her body or their proximity; there was no reaction in her aura that would indicate that she knew what she was doing. Shadow, however, felt a pleasant, warm rush in his body from her touch.

'What?' he thought to himself, 'after all this time, am I...?' Yes, he was. It wasn't that hot loud flood of hormones that had swarmed him when he had been with Yurei, it was a slow, pleasant feeling that spread through him. 'If this had happened six months ago,' he thought to himself, 'she would have been overjoyed. She never would have dreamed of my being attracted back to her. But, now...' He sighed. He had betrayed her, essentially, and it would be difficult for her to allow herself to trust him... once she came out of this emotional storm she was in. It was now, while her walls were still down, that he should take the chance, or he'd never get it again.

He lifted her chin up, and looked in her eyes. There was initially shock, and then fear in her expression. She looked at his aura. She sat up, and pulled away from him, her eyes disbelieving.

"No..." she fidgeted a bit, refusing to look in his eyes. "You're fucking playing with me, I know you are!" She started to pull her shields up but Shadow pushed his own shields around her, making hers bounce off of his. Shadow forced her to look into his eyes, and he said,

"My aura isn't going to lie to you, and you can tell just as well as I do that the last of that spell has broken off. Ame, I don't want to hurt you again. I think I've already lost you forever, and I am hoping that I am wrong. Ame, am I wrong?" Ame sighed, and closed her eyes. There, at his touch, was her own aura -damn it to hell- reacting in the same way his was, betraying that yes, she still wanted him. Physically, at least.

There had been an apology scene with Charlie, she remembered. More than one, where he had begged her not to dump him and said that he didn't want to lose her. Shadow hadn't said some of the key things Charlie had said that showed an unhealthy obsession; nor was he acting too needy. It was all up to her, in other words. Ignoring what her body wanted, she looked inward. She wanted desperately to just fall into his arms, to trust him, and to love him. But there were six months of hurt and loneliness to consider, and they weren't to be taken too lightly. But after a moment she knew that she wasn't going to be able to put up her walls against him again, and acquiesced to her need. She said,

"Shadow... I... never stopped loving you. I guess... that's the truth of the matter."

Shadow took her and held her close to him for a moment, allowing himself to feel the touch of her skin against his hands. He then kissed her lightly on the mouth, his breath warming the vampire's skin momentarily. She shivered, and kissed him back, just as lightly, but it was obvious that she was using a lot of self control; the aura around her was stiff from her mental hold on it. Shadow asked,

"Are you still holding back from me, Ame? What do you still fear?" Ame stiffened, and looked down. Shadow still held her, waiting for her to say something, which he knew she would.

"Even when I was alive the first time, I... was averse to sex. I got the occasional crush just like the next girl, but it was like I was mentally blocked from allowing myself to act on it. And after Charlie... I wanted nothing to do with the process; as much as I didn't want to be alone, the thought of being trapped in another relationship like that one stopped me from even attempting to restart my search for a soul-mate. And then with the X-realm being the way it is, it eventually got to the point where nothing was sacred; in every way I could be violated, I was, and there was nothing special to the whole operation of sex anymore." Shadow smirked, he saw where this was going. Ame sighed at his smirk, and nodded with a slight smile, saying,

"Yes, you know what I'm about to say. And then you showed up. I heard that call from Maria, and nearly cried out from shock. I met her on level 2- the soul plane- and told her that I was willing to answer the call." Ame frowned, a look of regret in her eyes, and continued, "I told her what this place was like; I told her what it had done to me and what it had done to others who had been reborn here, I tried to get it through to her that this place was dangerous." Shadow could imagine how the conversation between the two girls had gone. Maria, the paragon of innocence, would have difficulty comprehending the severity of the danger that Ame was trying to convey. Ame said,

"But, she told me that I was the only one that had answered her call that could actually pull it off; that you deserved a second chance, etc... And that she could somehow tell that I had a lot more interest in this than I was showing; she basically told me she knew that I cared a lot more about you than I was saying. That little girl is perceptive, dammit." Shadow laughed, and replied,

"Indeed, she is... if we are to talk about her in the present tense..." Ame replied,

"Of course we are; it's not like you'll never see her again." Shadow asked, surprised,

"What? I will? But, how?" Ame replied seriously,

"If she made that call after she had already died, it's likely that she'll be able to come to you at some point. Actually, I'm surprised she hasn't already, with the close bond you two had." Ame's eyes narrowed in thought for a moment, and then she added,

"Well, I'm not all that surprised, now that I think about it. The Council has gotten much stronger, and they've gotten good at preventing things like that from happening. Something has got to be done about this; if the A-realm's invading, that means the X-realm has weakened to a point where it'll be difficult for me to fix things... Goddammit, I'm already too weak to fix things as it is..." Ame buried her face into Shadow's warm jacket, not crying but on the verge of tears. Shadow lifted her head, and looked into her eyes, saying,

"You don't have to do it alone, Ame. Whatever your measure may be of my magical strength, we both know that I am much more stable than you are, and certainly that can be of use to you?" Ame slowly shook her head, and replied,

"Shadow, I'm not going to just use you like that. I've told you before, I refuse to get into that kind of debt to anyone." Shadow shook his head, and replied,

"You have no choice in the matter, not if you want the X-realm to survive. You said that there are three forces that struggle for power in the X-realm... what happens if one of these forces disappears? Does that not lead into imbalance, and the eventual collapse of the system? I know this is the way that X-realm magic works; is it not the same way with the structure of the dimension itself?" Ame sighed, and nodded in affirmation. Shadow continued,

"Knowing this, and knowing that you are on the verge of falling apart, you won't grab the rope to save yourself and your world?" Ame replied,

"You're not just a rope, Shadow. You're not just a vessel for the future of the X-realm to be poured through, and neither am I, for that matter. You have needs and feelings of your own, and—"

Ame's protests were stopped by the kiss that Shadow laid on her lips, a kiss that was meant to be short and sweet, but one that mutated into something else quickly. Ame wrapped her slender arms around Shadow's neck, and kissed back, with a hot desperation that surprised both of them. The kiss ended after a few seconds, but it felt to the two as if it had lasted longer because of the feeling that went into it. They laid on the bed, and held each other for a few moments, finding a comfort in each other's arms that had been absent before that moment. Ame broke the silence.

"Shadow... what am I feeling? I don't think... I've ever felt this combination of emotions before." Shadow kissed her forehead, and replied,

"Quit analyzing your feelings, and just feel them for once." Ame replied,

"Funny thing for you to say, considering you haven't analyzed your feelings at all for the past six months. I'd rather be on this extreme of the line, thank you very much." Shadow sighed. She would have to bring that up, wouldn't she? He knew he deserved it, but... Ame said after a moment,

"Shadow, if we have too many happy moments, we'll have to pay for them with sad moments."

Shadow looked at her with incredulity, and asked,

"Don't you think we've already paid for them?" Ame looked at Shadow, eyes narrowed, and replied,

"I've certainly paid for them. You've spent the last six months gallivanting off with Yurei-san, so I don't know if that's exactly paying for happiness with sadness." Shadow frowned, and replied,

"You're going to keep on bringing this up... for how long?" Ame replied,

"Until I do something equally stupid. Which will probably happen at some point, so don't worry. I want to just have a quiet, happy moment, but..."

Ame's eyes closed, and she said no more. She had reached the limit of her physical energy, and couldn't stay awake any longer. Shadow pulled the blanket over her, and stared at her sleeping form for a moment. She was so strong, and so vulnerable, both at the same time. She was so easily hurt, but forced herself to recover from it at an inhuman – well, considering she wasn't human – rate. She felt she owed him a debt, she said... he felt he owed her a greater one. He wondered if either of them would be able to pay it off.

Shadow eventually relaxed, and copied the vampire by falling asleep.

AN: And thus it ends. I probably will write a sequel at some point, but I figured here would be a good place to end it, since the coupling worked out in the end.


End file.
